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now begins generated list of local instances, definitions, quotes, instances in chapters, wordnet info if available and instances among weblinks


OBJECT INSTANCES [0] - TOPICS - AUTHORS - BOOKS - CHAPTERS - CLASSES - SEE ALSO - SIMILAR TITLES

TOPICS
SEE ALSO


AUTH

BOOKS
old_bookshelf
Process_and_Reality
The_Life_Divine
The_Use_and_Abuse_of_History
The_World_as_Will_and_Idea
The_Yoga_Sutras

IN CHAPTERS TITLE
2.08_-_Memory,_Self-Consciousness_and_the_Ignorance
ENNEAD_05.03_-_The_Self-Consciousnesses,_and_What_is_Above_Them.

IN CHAPTERS CLASSNAME

IN CHAPTERS TEXT
01.02_-_Natures_Own_Yoga
01.04_-_The_Poetry_in_the_Making
01.07_-_Blaise_Pascal_(1623-1662)
01.09_-_The_Parting_of_the_Way
01.11_-_Aldous_Huxley:_The_Perennial_Philosophy
0_1963-08-03
02.02_-_Lines_of_the_Descent_of_Consciousness
02.02_-_The_Message_of_the_Atomic_Bomb
03.01_-_The_Malady_of_the_Century
03.03_-_Modernism_-_An_Oriental_Interpretation
04.02_-_Human_Progress
04.03_-_The_Eternal_East_and_West
05.03_-_Bypaths_of_Souls_Journey
05.04_-_Of_Beauty_and_Ananda
05.15_-_Sartrian_Freedom
05.17_-_Evolution_or_Special_Creation
05.22_-_Success_and_its_Conditions
10.08_-_Consciousness_as_Freedom
1.00e_-_DIVISION_E_-_MOTION_ON_THE_PHYSICAL_AND_ASTRAL_PLANES
1.02_-_MAPS_OF_MEANING_-_THREE_LEVELS_OF_ANALYSIS
1.02_-_The_Refusal_of_the_Call
1.03_-_The_Coming_of_the_Subjective_Age
1.04_-_Body,_Soul_and_Spirit
1.04_-_THE_APPEARANCE_OF_ANOMALY_-_CHALLENGE_TO_THE_SHARED_MAP
1.04_-_The_Discovery_of_the_Nation-Soul
1.05_-_Adam_Kadmon
1.05_-_Knowledge_by_Aquaintance_and_Knowledge_by_Description
1.05_-_The_Destiny_of_the_Individual
1.05_-_THE_HOSTILE_BROTHERS_-_ARCHETYPES_OF_RESPONSE_TO_THE_UNKNOWN
1.06_-_Dhyana_and_Samadhi
1.06_-_Man_in_the_Universe
1.06_-_MORTIFICATION,_NON-ATTACHMENT,_RIGHT_LIVELIHOOD
1.06_-_The_Objective_and_Subjective_Views_of_Life
1.070_-_The_Seven_Stages_of_Perfection
1.08_-_The_Synthesis_of_Movement
11.08_-_Body-Energy
1.10_-_GRACE_AND_FREE_WILL
1.11_-_Delight_of_Existence_-_The_Problem
1.11_-_The_Reason_as_Governor_of_Life
1.12_-_Delight_of_Existence_-_The_Solution
1.12_-_The_Office_and_Limitations_of_the_Reason
1.14_-_The_Principle_of_Divine_Works
1.15_-_The_Supreme_Truth-Consciousness
1.19_-_Equality
1.22_-_The_Problem_of_Life
1.24_-_Matter
1.27_-_The_Sevenfold_Chord_of_Being
1.3.2.01_-_I._The_Entire_Purpose_of_Yoga
1.439
1.4_-_Readings_in_the_Taittiriya_Upanishad
1.550_-_1.600_Talks
1956-12-19_-_Preconceived_mental_ideas_-_Process_of_creation_-_Destructive_power_of_bad_thoughts_-_To_be_perfectly_sincere
1.jt_-_Love_beyond_all_telling_(from_Self-Annihilation_and_Charity_Lead_the_Soul...)
1.rb_-_Sordello_-_Book_the_Second
2.01_-_On_Books
2.02_-_Brahman,_Purusha,_Ishwara_-_Maya,_Prakriti,_Shakti
2.03_-_The_Eternal_and_the_Individual
2.07_-_The_Knowledge_and_the_Ignorance
2.07_-_The_Upanishad_in_Aphorism
2.08_-_Memory,_Self-Consciousness_and_the_Ignorance
2.09_-_Memory,_Ego_and_Self-Experience
2.0_-_THE_ANTICHRIST
2.1.02_-_Nature_The_World-Manifestation
2.10_-_Knowledge_by_Identity_and_Separative_Knowledge
2.10_-_The_Realisation_of_the_Cosmic_Self
2.11_-_The_Boundaries_of_the_Ignorance
2.11_-_The_Modes_of_the_Self
2.13_-_Exclusive_Concentration_of_Consciousness-Force_and_the_Ignorance
2.13_-_The_Difficulties_of_the_Mental_Being
2.14_-_The_Unpacking_of_God
2.17_-_The_Progress_to_Knowledge_-_God,_Man_and_Nature
2.19_-_The_Planes_of_Our_Existence
2.20_-_The_Lower_Triple_Purusha
2.21_-_The_Ladder_of_Self-transcendence
2.23_-_The_Conditions_of_Attainment_to_the_Gnosis
2.24_-_Gnosis_and_Ananda
2.26_-_The_Ascent_towards_Supermind
32.05_-_The_Culture_of_the_Body
32.12_-_The_Evolutionary_Imperative
3.5.01_-_Aphorisms
3.7.1.07_-_Involution_and_Evolution
3.7.2.03_-_Mind_Nature_and_Law_of_Karma
3_-_Commentaries_and_Annotated_Translations
4.02_-_Humanity_in_Progress
4.03_-_The_Psychology_of_Self-Perfection
Blazing_P2_-_Map_the_Stages_of_Conventional_Consciousness
BOOK_II._--_PART_I._ANTHROPOGENESIS.
BOOK_II._--_PART_III._ADDENDA._SCIENCE_AND_THE_SECRET_DOCTRINE_CONTRASTED
BOOK_II._--_PART_II._THE_ARCHAIC_SYMBOLISM_OF_THE_WORLD-RELIGIONS
BOOK_I._--_PART_I._COSMIC_EVOLUTION
BOOK_I._--_PART_III._SCIENCE_AND_THE_SECRET_DOCTRINE_CONTRASTED
BS_1_-_Introduction_to_the_Idea_of_God
ENNEAD_01.04_-_Whether_Animals_May_Be_Termed_Happy.
ENNEAD_03.01_-_Concerning_Fate.
ENNEAD_03.08b_-_Of_Nature,_Contemplation_and_Unity.
ENNEAD_03.09_-_Fragments_About_the_Soul,_the_Intelligence,_and_the_Good.
ENNEAD_04.03_-_Psychological_Questions.
ENNEAD_04.04_-_Questions_About_the_Soul.
ENNEAD_04.07_-_Of_the_Immortality_of_the_Soul:_Polemic_Against_Materialism.
ENNEAD_05.03_-_The_Self-Consciousnesses,_and_What_is_Above_Them.
ENNEAD_05.05_-_That_Intelligible_Entities_Are_Not_External_to_the_Intelligence_of_the_Good.
ENNEAD_05.06_-_The_Superessential_Principle_Does_Not_Think_-_Which_is_the_First_Thinking_Principle,_and_Which_is_the_Second?
ENNEAD_05.08_-_Concerning_Intelligible_Beauty.
ENNEAD_06.05_-_The_One_and_Identical_Being_is_Everywhere_Present_In_Its_Entirety.345
ENNEAD_06.07_-_How_Ideas_Multiplied,_and_the_Good.
The_Act_of_Creation_text
Theaetetus
The_Coming_Race_Contents
Thus_Spoke_Zarathustra_text
Timaeus

PRIMARY CLASS

consciousness
knowledge
self
SIMILAR TITLES
self-consciousness

DEFINITIONS


TERMS STARTING WITH

self-consciousness ::: n. --> The quality or state of being self-conscious.

Self-consciousness Awareness of oneself as the experiencer, attribution of one’s experiences to an ego, consciousness of being a separate individual; whereas consciousness in the abstract is merely awareness of the experience. Animals and very young children are conscious, man is self-conscious; yet the adult, when engrossed in an experience, may lose his self-consciousness for a while. But even man is only partially self-conscious, because he can contemplate only part of his being; that in him which is now the contemplator may become part of what is contemplated. As the subject, the knower, shifts upwards and inwards, so to speak, more and more of the vestures pass into the category of objects or what is known. The Unknown manifests the universe in order to attain full self-consciousness; and in man, the microcosm, an unself-conscious spark of divinity passes through stages of evolution and experience in order to achieve relatively full self-consciousness. The potentiality of self-consciousness, however, is in every atom. In order to become self-conscious, spirit must pass through every cycle of cosmic being, until every ego has attained full self-consciousness as a human being or equivalent entity. Man’s self-consciousness depends on his triple nature; it is man who is the separator of the One into various contrasted aspects.

Self-consciousness: The knowledge by the self of itself.

Self-Consciousness: The knowledge by the self of itself. The term is usually restricted to empirical self-consciousness. (See Empirical Ego) -- L.W.

SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS The monad&


TERMS ANYWHERE

. a brahman ::: brahman with qualities, the active brahman, whose "being assumes by conscious Will all kinds of properties [gun.as], shapings of the stuff of conscious being, habits as it were of cosmic character and power of dynamic self-consciousness"; it provides the basis of "general personality" in the vision of brahman (brahmadarsana) from which emerge the bhavas or "states of perception" of the purus.a that reveal the "divine secret behind personality".

According to the Vedas and Puranas was famous for being the first to produce the sacred triad of fires by the friction of two sticks as many finger-breadths long as there are syllables in the Gayatri, and made of the wood of the asvattha tree (the tree of wisdom). This legend is full of occult meaning hid under archaic allusions. Pururavas is a generalized name for the human monad which in imbodiment is at once the son of divine wisdom and spirit, and of space or mystic earth. The triad of sacred fires are the fire of spirit or inspiration and intuition, the fire of intellect, and the fires of matter or space; and the union of these three into the one generalized fire of the human constitution forms in a sense the field of self-consciousness as well as of the self-conscious ego itself.

ahaṃ-kāra ::: self-consciousness, sense of self, concept of individuality, ego-attachment; pride, egotism; arrogance, haughtiness; conceit. (in some texts as ahankar)

Ahamkara: Egoism or self-conceit; the self-arrogating principle ‘I’, ‘I am’-ness; self-consciousness. Rajasika ahamkara: Dynamic egoism with passion and pride. Sattvika ahamkara: Egoism composed in the sense of goodness and virtue. Tamasika ahamkara: Egoism as expressed in ignorance and inertia.

Aham pratyaya: ‘I’-feeling; self-consciousness.

All things in existence or non-existence are symbols of the Absolute created in self-consciousness (Chid-Atman); by Its symbols the Absolute can be known so far as the symbols reveal or hint at it, but even the knowledge of the whole sum of symbols does not amount to real knowledge of the Absolute. You can become Parabrahman; you cannot know Parabrahman. Becoming Parabrahman means going back through self-consciousness into Parabrahman, for you already are That, only you have projected yourself forward in self-consciousness into its terms or symbols, Purusha & Prakriti through which you uphold the universe. Th
   refore, to become Parabrahman void of terms or symbols you must cease out of the universe. By becoming Parabrahman void of Its self-symbols you do not become anything you are not already, nor does the universe cease to operate. It only means that God throws back out of the ocean of manifest consciousness one stream or movement of Himself into that from which all consciousness proceeded.
   Ref: CWSA Vol. 12, Page: 103


CONSCIOUSNESS, CONTINUITY OF
Man&


Any phase of negative trance state is therefore unnatural and often highly dangerous, because the whole trend of nature is towards an ever greater self-consciousness and a stronger spiritual will and nobler intellectual activity.

Apperception: (Lat. ad + percipere, to perceive) (a) In epistemology: The introspective or reflective apprehension by the mind of its own inner states. Leibniz, who introduced the term, distinguished between perception, (the inner state as representing outer things) and apperception (the inner state as reflectively aware of itself). Principles of Nature and of Grace, § 4. In Kant, apperception denotes the unity of self-consciousness pertaining to either the empirical ego ("empirical apperception") or to the pure ego ("transcendental apperception"), Critique of Pure Reason, A 106-8.

Apperception Perception involving self-consciousness; cognition through the relating of new ideas to familiar ideas. Used by Leibniz to denote a stage higher or more subtle than perception. The impressions received through perception are apprehended by the mind and are related to other impressions which the memory holds, so that complex ideas are formed. Apperception may be called perception accompanied by awareness and an interpretative power. In contrast to the theory that the higher faculties of mind are built up synthetically from the lower, Leibniz’s views support the theory that the intuitive or original inner powers are primary. “Nascent apperception, which is the Mahat of the lower kingdoms, especially developed in the third order of Elementals . . . [is] succeeded by the objective kingdom of minerals, in which latter that apperception is entirely latent, to re-develop only in the plants”; and “that which is meant by ‘animals,’ in primary Creation, is the germ of awakening consciousness or of apperception, that which is faintly traceable in some sensitive plants on Earth and more distinctly in the protistic monera. . . . Neither plant nor animal, but an existence between the two” (SD 1:454-5&n; cf ET 505 3rd & rev ed ).

As universal self-consciousness, ahamkara has “a triple aspect, as also Manas. For this conception of ‘I,’ or one’s Ego, is either sattwa, ‘pure quietude,’ or appears as rajas, ‘active,’ or remains tamas, ‘stagnant,’ in darkness. It belongs to Heaven and Earth, and assumes the properties of either” (SD 1:335n).

atma prajna. ::: Self-consciousness

AUTOMATIZATION The monad reaches the highest level of consciousness
(objective self-consciousness) in a kind of matter when it completely dominates the corresponding envelope of the monad and its consciousness functions have been taken over by the next higher envelope through automatization. (P 2.27.5, 2.41.5)


Back of all the orderly unfolding of the embryonic cells — usually ascribed to nature — is the subconscious directing influence of the monadic ego born from and bathing in the cosmic intelligence. In human beings the reincarnating ego is a ray of a spiritual monad, whose self-consciousness and activity takes in the solar system. This monad is karmically bound to oversee the evolving career of the human ego; and this celestial parentage in the cosmic hierarchy makes humans literally children of the sun. Here, then, is the solution of the biological mystery of unfolding purpose which is so harmoniously worked out by the reproductive material of a single cell. This intelligent influence acts upon the embryo through the directive power of “the astral fluid, working through and in conjunction with the vital capacities and potentialities of the cell . . .” (MIE 217-8).

Berger, Abraham. “The Messianic Self-Consciousness

self-consciousness ::: n. --> The quality or state of being self-conscious.

Buddhi-manas (Sanskrit) Buddhi-manas [from buddhi spiritual soul + manas intellect] The higher ego, the principle of essential self-consciousness, especially when considered as over-enlightened by the atman or self per se. Buddhi-manas is the karana-sarira (causal body), hence the immortal or spiritual self which passes intact from one incarnation to another. This higher self or ego is formed of the indissoluble union of buddhi, the sixth principle counting upwards, and the spiritual efflorescence of manas, the fifth principle. Buddhi-manas is the divine individual soul infilled with the light of the ray from the atman, and hence includes human intellect and egoic self-consciousness, in addition to all the spiritual faculties and powers inherent in the ray itself. See also ATMA-BUDDHI-MANAS

Buddhi-taijasi (Sanskrit) Buddhi-taijasī In relation to the human principles, used to express the state of manas when it is bathed in the radiance of buddhi, the spiritual soul; yet its more exact significance is the radiance of buddhi itself: buddhi when actively radiating its own buddhic svabhava or characteristic. When manas becomes irradiated with buddhi-taijasi, then the human manasic faculty, the intellect, becomes suffused and infilled with spiritual discrimination and vision. It is the human soul “illuminated by the radiance of the divine soul. Therefore, Manas-taijasi may be described as radiant mind; the human reason lit by the light of the spirit; and Buddhi-Manas is the revelation of the divine plus human intellect and self-consciousness” (Key 159n). See also TAIJASA

CAUSAL SELF Monad that has its most important kind of subjective and objective self-consciousness in atomic world 47:1 and molecular world 47:2,3 within the solar system. Causal selves belonging to mankind are at the stage of ideality and have consciousness in 47:2,3, causal selves in the fifth natural kingdom have consciousness in
47:1.

The causal self is able to study all its previous lives as a man, is able independently and quickly to acquire the facts necessary to comprehend all realities in the worlds of man, achieving more in one hour (in 47:1) than the most efficient mental thinker could manage in one hundred years. Fictions are precluded. K 1.20.10

The causal self can ascertain that the esoteric world view and life view agrees with facts in the five worlds of man (47- 49). (K 4.11.8)


cit (chit) ::: consciousness; the infinite self-awareness that is "the elemental origin and primal completeness of all this varied consciousness which is here used for various formation and experience", the second term of saccidananda; "an inherent self-consciousness" in brahman,"inseparable from its being [sat] and throwing itself out as a force [tapas] of movement of consciousness which is creative of forces, forms and worlds"; the "universal conscious-stuff of existence", the "original Consciousness" which "modifies itself so as to become on the Truthplane the supermind, on the mental plane the mental reason, will, emotion, sensation, on the lower planes the vital or physical instincts, impulses, habits of an obscure force not in superficially conscious possession of itself".

COLLECTIVE BEINGS In all natural kingdoms the monads form collective beings. In the three subhuman kingdoms, non-self-conscious monads form group-souls. In the human kingdom, the development of self-consciousness becomes the essential purpose, and so man&

COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS All consciousness is at the same time collective consciousness. This is so because there is no personal isolation, although only those who have acquired essential consciousness (46) can live in the collective consciousness.

There are innumerable kinds of collective consciousness: atomic, molecular, aggregate, world, planetary, systemic, and after these, different kinds of cosmic consciousness. The higher the kingdom attained by the monad, the more is embraced by the collective consciousness in which the self, with its self-consciousness preserved, experiences other selves as its own larger self.

Or, to put it differently, all consciousness in the whole cosmos constitutes a common, inevitable, indivisible unity in which every individual has a smaller or greater part, depending on the level of development he has attained. K 1.16.3ff

The collective consciousness is the primary and common one; the individual self-consciousness the individual must acquire by himself throughout ever higher natural kingdoms, this being possible because of his very participation in the collective consciousness. K 2.4.2

Anything that can form a collective consciousness by reason of some kind of relatedness, automatically constitutes one. K 2.4.4


CONSCIOUSNESS, CONTROL OF Process in which the monad by its active self-consciousness gradually acquires full mastery of the passive consciousness of its envelopes. As a result, the monad can itself determine what feelings and thoughts, etc. it wants to have or not to have. (K 7.17, P 3.71f)

CONSCIOUSNESS, DIFFERENT KINDS OF One must distinguish between self-consciousness (individual consciousness, self-consciousness in the envelopes), collective consciousness, and ultimate self consciousness. (Technically, cosmic, systemic, and planetary consciousness can be distinguished.) K 1.16.1

There are as many different kinds of consciousness as there are kinds of matter.
Each world has its own total consciousness, as each monad envelope has its own. K
4.7.2


Cosmically this highly esoteric story refers to the cosmic Logos building the universe and becoming thereby not only its inspiriting and invigorating soul, but likewise the divinity guiding manifestation from Chaos to complete fullness of evolutionary grandeur; and in the case of mankind, the legend refers to the origin, peregrinations, and destiny of the human monad, itself a spiritual consciousness-center, from unself-consciousness as a god-spark, through the wanderings of destiny until becoming a fully self-conscious god. The key to the symbolism of Zagreus-Dionysos is given by Plato in the Cratylus: “The Spirit within us is the true image of Dionysos. He therefore who acts erroneously in regard to It . . . sins against Dionysos Himself,” i.e., the inner god, the divinity in man. The legend thus contains not only past cosmic as well as human history, but contains as a prophecy what will come to pass in the distant future.

Demon(s) [from Greek daimones, Latin daemons] In many of the later religions, such as Christianity, either the gods of rival religions, nature spirits of paganism, or the exuviae or shells of the dead. Actually demons are a relatively modern misapprehension of a large class of nature sprites which in ancient thought comprised a vast range of spiritual, semi-spiritual, and astral beings, existing in different degrees of evolutionary unfoldment, and therefore classified into groups from the fully self-conscious down to the only partly conscious elementals of the astral realms. The teaching regarding daimones was extremely recondite; the later medieval Christian Demonologies, however, dealt almost exclusively with beings of low grade and of an astral character lacking moral sense and self-consciousness, which for ages have been called in European countries by names such as fairies, sprites, goblins, hobgoblins, pixies, nixies, and brownies. See also DAEMON

DEVA EVOLUTION Line of evolution parallel to the human evolution. The deva monads pursue their own path after the mineral kingdom, which is common to all evolutionary beings, and thus they do not become humans although they reach the corresponding kinds of active self-consciousness. Branches reach the deva evolution even from the vegetable and animal kingdoms of the human evolution. Deva monads at evolutionary stages corresponding to the vegetable and animal kingdoms are called nature beings (or nature spirits), those at stages corresponding to the human kingdom and higher kingdoms are called devas.

Deva(s)(Sanskrit) ::: A word meaning celestial being, of which there are various classes. This has been a greatpuzzle for most of our Occidental Orientalists. They cannot understand the distinctions that thewonderful old philosophers of the Orient make as regards the various classes of the devas. They say, insubstance: "What funny contradictions there are in these teachings, which in many respects are profoundand seem wonderful. Some of these devas or divine beings are said to be less than man; some of thesewritings even say that a good man is nobler than any god. And yet other parts of these teachings declarethat there are gods higher even than the devas, and yet are called devas. What does this mean?"The devas or celestial beings, one class of them, are the unself-conscious sparks of divinity, cyclingdown into matter in order to bring out from within themselves and to unfold or evolve self-consciousness,the svabhava of divinity within. They then begin their reascent always on the luminous arc, which neverends, in a sense; and they are gods, self-conscious gods, henceforth taking a definite and divine part inthe "great work," as the mystics have said, of being builders, evolvers, leaders of hierarchies. In otherwords, they are monads which have become their own innermost selves, which have passed thering-pass-not separating the spiritual from the divine.

Dondampai-denpa (Tibetan) don dam pa’i bden pa (don-dam-pe den-pa) Absolute or universal truth or reality, equivalent to the Sanskrit paramarthasatya; hence in the individual being, the highest spiritual perception and self-consciousness. The opposite of this term is kundzabchi-denpa (kun rdzob kyi bden pa, kun-dzob-kyi den-pa — illusion-creating appearance), samvritti-satya in Sanskrit — the origin of illusion or maya.

During this evolutionary journey it passes from unself-consciousness through manifold and all-various stages of experience to self-consciousness, finally merging into divinity. When this last stage is reached it is no longer an unself-conscious god-spark but a self-conscious god, one of the co-laborers and collaborators in the great work of the building of the worlds.

Early humanity was not self-conscious; it was the living intellectual fires or manasaputras which gave to the human mind its self-perception and self-consciousness or manas. This manas is derived ultimately from cosmic mahat, and in man today it had become ahamship or ahankara. Full self-consciousness means consciousness of the one self, cosmic Purusha, the seventh principle, not only of the universe but likewise of man himself.

Ego, Pure: The self conceived as a non-empirical principle, ordinarily inaccessible to direct introspection, but inferred from introspective evidence. See Ego, empirical. The principal theories of the pure ego are: (a) the soul theory which regards the pure ego as a permanent, spiritual substance underlying the fleeting succession of conscious experience, and (b) the transcendental theory of Kant which considers the self an inscrutable subject presupposed by the unity of empirical self-consciousness. -- L.W.

EMOTIONAL SELF Monad whose most important kind of self-consciousness is within the molecular worlds 48:2-7 of the solar system. Human emotional selves are at the stages of civilization and culture.

ENVELOPES, MONAD ENVELOPES The consciousness of the monads develops in envelopes. It is by acquiring consciousness in its envelopes and in the ever higher molecular kinds of these envelopes that the monad attains ever higher natural kingdoms.

All forms of nature are envelopes. In every atom, molecule, organism, world, planet, solar system, etc., there is one monad at a higher stage of development than are the other monads in this form of nature. K 1.13.1f

Each envelope of the individual has its consciousness, its memory: the subconscious collective consciousness of its different molecules. K 1.23.1

The self develops in and through envelopes, from the lowest physical etheric envelope to the highest cosmic world. It constantly acquires new envelopes in one world after another. Step by step it acquires self-consciousness in the ever higher molecular kinds of its envelope by learning to activate the consciousness in these. By this it finally becomes master in its envelope. Until then it is disoriented in the consciousness chaos of this envelope, and it is the victim of vibrations from without. K 1.30.4


Ephialtes (Greek) In Greek mythology a titan, son of Poseidon, who with his brother Otus makes war on Olympus and puts Ares in chains for l3 months. At the age of nine years each brother was 54 feet high and 36 feet broad. These two titans as types refer to the late Lemurians of the third root-race, and also to the earliest Atlanteans, known for their huge size, daring spirit, and their wars against the gods or Sons of Light. However, they were not demons in the Christian sense; for these early races were simply the gigantic early mankind in which self-consciousness expressed itself in high pride, the love of material power as compared with spiritual, and in works of material or physical achievement.

ESSENTIAL SELF, 46-SELF Monad having envelope and self-consciousness in the essential world of the planet (46). The essential self has centred itself in the second triad essential atom and is a member of the fifth natural kingdom.

The 46-self is omniscient in the worlds 46-49.

As an essential self, the individual has to acquire by himself through his own research complete knowledge of everything of importance in the human worlds (47-49).

Essential monads form a collective being of their own having a common total consciousness.

The essential self does not need to incarnate further, since he has no more to learn in the kingdom of man. He often does incarnate, however, in order by all means and by personal contact to help those preparing for their entrance into this higher kingdom. K 1.35.8, 10ff


EVOLUTION When the monads upon the completion of involution have reached the physical world, 49, evolution begins, which is their return to the highest cosmic world, 1. Evolution begins in the mineral kingdom of the physical world, continues through the vegetable, animal, and human kingdoms and then passes to expansion, the continuation of evolution in higher kingdoms.

Evolution is that process in which the monad&


FIRST SELF Monad that has self-consciousness in someone of the three units of the first triad, individual in the fourth natural kingdom. Man is a first self.
First selves are divided into physical selves, emotional selves, and mental selves.


Free Will The inherent power or capacity of choice, divine in its origin, which every being in the kosmos exercises in some degree as, consciously or unself-consciously, it evolves forth its essential self. Every thing and being has its own essential characteristic or svabhava and, the universal urge being towards self-expression and self-consciousness, of necessity each has its relative share of inherent free will with which to work out its destiny. Since evolution is a coming forth of the involved monadic essence, the unfolding of inner capacities and attributes, it cannot be produced, however stimulated, by something outside of itself. The one divine will is the force behind evolution on all planes of manifestation throughout the kosmos. Hence, each entity, as a unit of the divine All, has its portion of free choice and power to bring forth what is within itself.

God-sparks When evolution starts on the downward arc, the spiritual essence appears as a vast host of individual monads or spiritual, conscious atoms which, because of their lack of the self-conscious human condition, are often termed unself-conscious god-sparks — although this does not mean that they lack self-consciousness on their own plane, for these monads never leave their own planes. To speak of a monad incarnating means that a ray projected from the monad “descends” from its plane in a minor avataric sense to inflame the nascent manasic element or power in lower beings, precisely as took place in the cases of the manasaputras. These god-sparks, being the spiritual monads of living entities, gradually emanate from themselves the successive vestures through which they manifest, the process taking place serially and ladder-fashion on the downward arc; with the eventual result that, at the end of the ascending arc, the unself-conscious god-sparks become self-conscious gods, which means that the self-conscious humanity of them becomes linked self-consciously to the self-consciousness of the monads on their own plane.

Hippopotamus In ancient Egypt, a symbol connected with every goddess, especially Rert or Rertu, Apet, and Ta-urt. It was used as a kindly guardian of the dead in the underworld in the Book of the Dead. In a contrary aspect, the monster Am-mit, which appears in the judgment scene, has the hindquarters of a hippopotamus. It represents the horrors and fear of the astral world awaiting the defunct, which spring into life if that person’s karma has brought about awakening self-consciousness in kama-loka.

Human Kingdom One of the great kingdoms or divisions of monads on earth. Below it are the animal, plant, mineral, and also three elemental kingdoms; above are kingdoms of dhyanis or highly evolved human beings and gods. One of the critical points in evolution, at which self-consciousness is attained, although by no means fully developed. Here the spiritual and the material meet: the spiritual self finds its house in the organism built up of lower elements, and the two-natured human being of earth is thus formed. See MAN; ROOT-RACES

I-am, I-am-I I-am-I denotes self-consciousness in which the essential consciousness is reflected in a transmitting vehicle or soul. I-am denotes simple unadulterated being, and is used as a name for the cosmic self. Thus the I-am-I is a lower manifestation of the I-am, which is abstract and incomprehensible to ordinary human mentality. Philosophically, I-am-I is a temporary production of Purusha working in and through the prakritis, or of the image-making power inherent in human consciousness called ahankara (the “I-creating” faculty); so that when evolution has been completed, the I-am-I or self-consciousness will have risen through its various higher forms to become at least for a manvantara the cosmic self.

I-am-ness Ahankara, self-hood, egoship; an evolution of consciousness centered in manas, by which manas becomes the field for the play of self-consciousness. Also, the illusion of separate selfhood.

Immortality ::: A term signifying continuous existence or being; but this understanding of the term is profoundlyillogical and contrary to nature, for there is nothing throughout nature's endless and multifarious realmsof being and existence which remains for two consecutive instants of time exactly the same.Consequently, immortality is a mere figment of the imagination, an illusory phantom of reality. When thestudent of the esoteric wisdom once realizes that continuous progress, i.e., continuous change inadvancement, is nature's fundamental procedure, he recognizes instantly that continuous remaining in anunchanging or immutable state of consciousness or being is not only impossible, but in the last analysis isthe last thing that is either desirable or comforting. Fancy continuing immortal in a state of imperfection such as we human beingsexemplify -- which is exactly what the usual acceptance of this term immortality means. The highest godin highest heaven, although seemingly immortal to us imperfect human beings, is nevertheless anevolving, growing, progressing entity in its own sublime realms or spheres, and therefore as the ages passleaves one condition or state to assume a succeeding condition or state of a nobler and higher type;precisely as the preceding condition or state had been the successor of another state before it.Continuous or unending immutability of any condition or state of an evolving entity is obviously animpossibility in nature; and when once pondered over it becomes clear that the ordinary acceptance ofimmortality involves an impossibility. All nature is an unending series of changes, which means all thehosts or multitudes of beings composing nature, for every individual unit of these hosts is growing,evolving, i.e., continuously changing, therefore never immortal. Immortality and evolution arecontradictions in terms. An evolving entity means a changing entity, signifying a continuous progresstowards better things; and evolution therefore is a succession of state of consciousness and being afteranother state of consciousness and being, and thus throughout duration. The Occidental idea of staticimmortality or even mutable immortality is thus seen to be both repellent and impossible.This doctrine is so difficult for the average Occidental easily to understand that it may be advisable onceand for all to point out without mincing of words that just as complete death, that is to say, entireannihilation of consciousness, is an impossibility in nature, just so is continuous and unchangingconsciousness in any one stage or phase of evolution likewise an impossibility, because progress ormovement or growth is continuous throughout eternity. There are, however, periods more or less long ofcontinuance in any stage or phase of consciousness that may be attained by an evolving entity; and thehigher the being is in evolution, the more its spiritual and intellectual faculties have been evolved orevoked, the longer do these periods of continuous individual, or perhaps personal, quasi-immortalitycontinue. There is, therefore, what may be called relative immortality, although this phrase is confessedlya misnomer.Master KH in The Mahatma Letters, on pages 128-30, uses the phrase ``panaeonic immortality" tosignify this same thing that I have just called relative immortality, an immortality -- falsely so called,however -- which lasts in the cases of certain highly evolved monadic egos for the entire period of amanvantara, but which of necessity ends with the succeeding pralaya of the solar system. Such a periodof time of continuous self-consciousness of so highly evolved a monadic entity is to us humans actually arelative immortality; but strictly and logically speaking it is no more immortality than is the ephemeralexistence of a butterfly. When the solar manvantara comes to an end and the solar pralaya begins, evensuch highly evolved monadic entities, full-blown gods, are swept out of manifested self-consciousexistence like the sere and dried leaves at the end of the autumn; and the divine entities thus passing outenter into still higher realms of superdivine activity, to reappear at the end of the pralaya and at the dawnof the next or succeeding solar manvantara.The entire matter is, therefore, a highly relative one. What seems immortal to us humans would seem tobe but as a wink of the eye to the vision of super-kosmic entities; while, on the other hand, the span ofthe average human life would seem to be immortal to a self-conscious entity inhabiting one of theelectrons of an atom of the human physical body.The thing to remember in this series of observations is the wondrous fact that consciousness frometernity to eternity is uninterrupted, although by the very nature of things undergoing continuous andunceasing change of phases in realization throughout endless duration. What men call unconsciousness ismerely a form of consciousness which is too subtle for our gross brain-minds to perceive or to sense or tograsp; and, secondly, strictly speaking, what men call death, whether of a universe or of their ownphysical bodies, is but the breaking up of worn-out vehicles and the transference of consciousness to ahigher plane. It is important to seize the spirit of this marvelous teaching, and not allow the imperfectbrain-mind to quibble over words, or to pause or hesitate at difficult terms.

Impersonalistic Idealism identifies ontological reality essentially with non-conscious spiritual principle, unconscious psychic agency, pure thought, impersonal or "pure" consciousness, pure Ego, subconscious Will, impersonal logical Mind, etc. Personalistic Idealism characterizes concrete reality as personal selfhood, i.e., as possessing self-consciousness. With respect to the relation of the Absolute or World-Ground (s.) to finite selves or centers of consciousness, varying degrees of unity or separateness are posited. The extreme doctrines are radical monism and radical pluralism. Monistic Idealism (pantheistic Idealism) teaches that the finite self is a part, mode, aspect, moment, appearance or projection of the One. Pluralistic Idealism defends both the inner privacy of the finite self and its relative freedom from direct or causal dependence upon the One. With respect to Cosmology, pure idealism is either subjective or objective. Subjective Idealism (acosmism) holds that Nature is merely the projection of the finite mind, and has no external, real existence. (The term "Subjective Idealism" is also used for the view that the ontologically real consists of subjects, i.e., possessors of experience.) Objective Idealism identifies an externally real Nature with the thought or activity of the World Mind, (In Germany the term "Objective Idealism" is commonly identified with the view that finite minds are parts -- modes, moments, projections. appearances, members -- of the Absolute Mind.) Epistemological Idealism derives metaphysical idealism from the identificition of objects with ideas. In its nominalistic form the claim is made that "To be is to be perceived." From the standpoint of rationalism it is argued that there can be no Object without a Subject. Subjects, relations, sensations, and feelings are mental; and since no other type of analogy remains by which to characterize a non-mental thing-in-itself, pure idealism follows as the only possible view of Being.

  “In addition to this, there was still another class of Manasaputras who, as it were, started the whole thing going by inflaming . . . with their own fire of intelligent thought and self-consciousness those of the human race who, at that time, in the early part of the Third Root-Race in this Round, were ready, who caught the flame; and then their own mental apparatus, their own manasic powers, burst as it were into bloom as a rose unfolds rapidly its petals when the season comes for it to do so. And these Manasaputras . . . were the highly evolved entities from previous cosmic manvantaras, who deliberately, belonging as they do to the hierarchy of the Buddhas of Compassion, as it were left their own sublime spheres and descended among men and taught them — and then withdrew” (SOPh 468).

Individuality ::: Theosophists draw a sharp and comprehensive distinction between individuality and personality. Theindividuality is the spiritual-intellectual and immortal part of us; deathless, at least for the duration of thekosmic manvantara -- the root, the very essence of us, the spiritual sun within, our inner god. Thepersonality is the veil, the mask, composed of various sheaths of consciousness through which theindividuality acts.The word individuality means that which cannot be divided, that which is simple and pure in thephilosophical sense, indivisible, uncompounded, original. It is not heterogeneous; it is not composite; it isnot builded up of other elements; it is the thing in itself. Whereas, on the contrary, the intermediate natureand the lower nature are composite, and therefore mortal, being builded up of elements other thanthemselves. Strictly speaking, individuality and monad are identical, but the two words are convenientbecause of the distinctions of usage contained in them; just as consciousness and self-consciousness arefundamentally identical, but convenient as words on account of the distinctions contained in them. (Seealso Monad)

Initiates ::: Those who have passed at least one initiation and therefore those who understand the mystery-teachingsand who are ready to receive them at some future time in even larger measure. Please note the distinctionbetween initiant and initiate. An initiant is one who is beginning or preparing for an initiation. An initiateis one who has successfully passed at least one initiation. It is obvious therefore that an initiate is alwaysan initiant when he prepares for a still higher initiation.The mystery-teachings were held as the most sacred treasure or possession that men could transmit totheir descendants who were worthy postulants. The revelation of these mystery-doctrines under the sealof initiation, and under proper conditions to worthy depositaries, worked marvelous changes in the livesof those who underwent successfully the initiatory trials. It made men different from what they werebefore they received this spiritual and intellectual revelation. The facts are found in all the old religionsand philosophies, if these are studied honestly. Initiation was always spoken of under the metaphor orfigure of speech of "a new birth," a "birth into truth," for it was a spiritual and intellectual rebirth of thepowers of the human spirit-soul, and could be called in all truth a birth of the soul into a loftier andnobler self-consciousness. When this happened, such men were called "initiates" or the reborn. In India,such reborn men were anciently called dvija, a Sanskrit word meaning "twice-born." In Egypt suchinitiates or reborn men were called "Sons of the Sun." In other countries they were called by other names.

…in Nature each of us has a principle and will of our own becoming; each soul is a force of self-consciousness that formulates an idea of the Divine in it and guides by that its action and evolution, its progressive self-finding, its constant varying self-expression, its apparently uncertain but secretly inevitable growth to fullness. That is our Swabhava.
   Ref: CWSA Vol. 19, Page: 519


Intelligence, creative: A term denoting the presence of self-consciousness, self-direction and purpose in the creative processes of the world. Syn. in Personalism for God, elan vital, but in naturalism of Dewey, divorced from such associttion. -- R.T.F.

In the antithesis between Zeus (here not the supreme Olympian lord) and Prometheus, is the antagonism between the Hebrew Lord God and the serpent. The so-called disobedience of these fallen angels is an act of spiritual chivalry, in which the divine prerogative of free will is exercised in the spirit of compassion, an old order is superseded, and a new chapter in evolution is begun. In both stories the deity invokes a curse upon the fallen angel and his new humanity; and this curse is fulfilled in the suffering caused by the conflict between the two natures in man thus awakened. Prometheus, who may also be taken as representing humanity, is fastened to a rock representing karmic destiny, while the vultures of new-born knowledge and self-consciousness gnaw at his inner being. But the curse ends in a blessing, and Hercules or Dionysos delivers the Chrestos or immanent Christ, enlightens and raises the neophyte.

In theosophy initiation is generally used in reference to entering into the sacred wisdom under the direction of initiates, in the schools of the Mysteries. By initiation the candidate quickens natural evolution and thus anticipates the growth which will be achieved by the generality of humanity at a much later time in developmental evolution. He or she unfolds from within the latent spiritual and intellectual powers, thus raising individual self-consciousness to a corresponding level. The induction into the various degrees was aptly spoken of as a new birth.

introspection ::: n. --> A view of the inside or interior; a looking inward; specifically, the act or process of self-examination, or inspection of one&

“It thus becomes clear why the Agnishwatta, devoid of the grosser creative fire, hence unable to create physical man, having no double, or astral body, to project, since they were without any form, are shown in exoteric allegories as Yogis, Kumaras (chaste youths), who became ‘rebels,’ Asuras, fighting and opposing gods . . . Yet it is they alone who could complete man, i.e., make of him a self-conscious, almost a divine being — a god on Earth. The Barhishad, though possessed of creative fire, were devoid of the higher mahat-mic element. Being on a level with the lower principles — those which precede gross objective matter — they could only give birth to the outer man, or rather to the model of the physical, the astral man” (SD 2:78-9). The barhishads “could only create, or rather clothe, the human Monads with their own astral Selves, but they could not make man in their image and likeness. ‘Man must not be like one of us,’ say the creative gods, entrusted with the fabrication of the lower animal but higher; . . . Their creating the semblance of men out of their own divine Essence means, esoterically, that it is they who became the first Race, and thus shared its destiny and further evolution. They would not, simply because they could not, give to man that sacred spark which burns and expands into the flower of human reason and self-consciousness, for they had it not to give” (SD 2:94-5).

Jesus makes a distinction between God and the Holy Ghost on the one hand, and himself on the other: he is not a god, he is a son of man. “Whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him; but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him” (Matthew 12:32; cf Revelation 1:13). In its cosmic mythical sense it is the equivalent of the first Manu of the Hindus, or Fetahil of the Gnostics. In several systems man as a race was regarded as the Third Logos: the monad, having attained the human stage of intellectual and spiritual self-consciousness, racially is the representation of the manifest or Third Logos on this earth (SD 2:25).

Jordan (Hebrew) Yardēn “The flowing” (a river) — with a collateral idea of descent from a higher place, in which lies its mystical significance. “Many Christian hymns speak of the mystical Jordan and of reaching the ‘shore beyond,’ a conception which appears to be more or less identic with that of Buddhism. ‘This side’ is the life of the world, the usual or common pursuits of men. The ‘other shore’ is simply the life spiritual, involving the expansion in relatively full power and function of the entire range of man’s nature. In other words, to reach the ‘other shore’ means living at one with the divinity within, and hence partaking of the universal life in relatively full self-consciousness” (FSO 43-4). This symbolism applies to other holy rivers, such as the Nile and Ganges.

Kwei Shen, Kuei Shen (Chinese) “Man is a product of the beneficial operation of Heaven and Earth, or of the copulation of the Yin and the Yang, and the union of a kwei with a shen; he consists of the finest breath which the five elements contain” (Li yun 3). The mayavi-rupa, which is the combination by the power of thought (or the inner kriyasakti) of the manasic faculty with a tenuous astral garment. The mayavi-rupa, however, is more often made to contain the complete human being minus the lowest triad (body, physical vitality, and linga-sarira); thus only in one sense does the mayavi-rupa correspond with the kwei shen. In the lower parts of the human constitution, it becomes vehicular rather than related to active self-consciousness, and can signify the vital body or linga-sarira.

Loki is descended from giant stock, but he is accepted among the Aesir (gods) as one of them and is considered a blood brother to Odin. Although as prankster and mischief maker he causes trouble for his brother deities at every turn, nevertheless, when appealed to, it is Loki who with his ready wit saves each situation. The panorama of evolution is thus epitomized: the pure deities must use mind, self-consciousness and free will unhampered, unruly though these properties are, to gain understanding. That is the purpose for which they embody; this means that the human thinking faculty must earn its godhood by freely choosing to cooperate with the divine purpose.

Mahatma(Mahatman, Sanskrit) ::: "Great soul" or "great self" is the meaning of this compound word (maha, "great";atman, "self"). The mahatmas are perfected men, relatively speaking, known in theosophical literature asteachers, elder brothers, masters, sages, seers, and by other names. They are indeed the "elder brothers"of mankind. They are men, not spirits -- men who have evolved through self-devised efforts in individualevolution, always advancing forwards and upwards until they have now attained the lofty spiritual andintellectual human supremacy that now they hold. They were not so created by any extra-cosmic Deity,but they are men who have become what they are by means of inward spiritual striving, by spiritual andintellectual yearning, by aspiration to be greater and better, nobler and higher, just as every good man inhis own way so aspires. They are farther advanced along the path of evolution than the majority of menare. They possess knowledge of nature's secret processes, and of hid mysteries, which to the average manmay seem to be little short of the marvelous -- yet, after all, this mere fact is of relatively smallimportance in comparison with the far greater and more profoundly moving aspects of their nature andlifework.Especially are they called teachers because they are occupied in the noble duty of instructing mankind, ininspiring elevating thoughts, and in instilling impulses of forgetfulness of self into the hearts of men.Also are they sometimes called the guardians, because they are, in very truth, the guardians of the raceand of the records -- natural, racial, national -- of past ages, portions of which they give out from time totime as fragments of a now long-forgotten wisdom, when the world is ready to listen to them; and theydo this in order to advance the cause of truth and of genuine civilization founded on wisdom andbrotherhood.Never -- such is the teaching -- since the human race first attained self-consciousness has this order orassociation or society or brotherhood of exalted men been without its representatives on our earth.It was the mahatmas who founded the modern Theosophical Society through their envoy or messenger,H. P. Blavatsky, in New York in 1875.

Mahatma (Sanskrit) Mahātman [from mahā great + ātman self] Great soul or self; relatively perfected human beings, also called teachers, elder brothers, Masters, sages, seers, etc. They are human beings who, through self-directed evolution and spiritual striving over many lifetimes, have attained a lofty spiritual and intellectual state. They are farther advanced evolutionarily than the majority of people, possessing great knowledge and powers; but their primary duty is the instruction and protection of mankind. From this body of advanced human beings, which has existed since humanity attained self-consciousness, have come the great teachers and the wisdom at the root of the world’s great religious, philosophic, and scientific systems.

Manasaputras (Sanskrit) Mānasaputra-s [from mānasa intelligent from manas mind + putra son, child] Sons of mind. Mind manifesting in the universe is called mahat; when manifesting in particular entities it is called manas. Manasa signifies beings who are endowed with the fire of self-consciousness which enables them to carry on trains of self-conscious thought and meditation. Hence the manasaputras are children of cosmic mind, a race of dhyani-chohans particularly evolved along the lines of the manasic principle.

Manasaputra(s)(Sanskrit) ::: This is a compound word: manas, "mind," putra, "son" -- "sons of mind." The teaching is thatthere exists a Hierarchy of Compassion, which H. P. Blavatsky sometimes called the Hierarchy of Mercyor of Pity. This is the light side of nature as contrasted with its matter side or shadow side, its night side.It is from this Hierarchy of Compassion that came those semi-divine entities at about the middle periodof the third root-race of this round, who incarnated in the semi-conscious, quasi-senseless men of thatperiod. These advanced entities are otherwise known as the solar lhas as the Tibetans call them, the solarspirits, who were the men of a former kalpa, and who during the third root-race thus sacrificedthemselves in order to give us intellectual light -- incarnating in those senseless psychophysical shells inorder to awaken the divine flame of egoity and self-consciousness in the sleeping egos which we thenwere. They are ourselves because belonging to the same spiritray that we do; yet we, more strictlyspeaking, were those halfunconscious, half-awakened egos whom they touched with the divine fire oftheir own being. This, our "awakening," was called by H. P. Blavatsky, the incarnation of themanasaputras, or the sons of mind or light. Had that incarnation not taken place, we indeed should havecontinued our evolution by merely "natural" causes, but it would have been slow almost beyondcomprehension, almost interminable; but that act of self-sacrifice, through their immense pity, theirimmense love, though, indeed, acting under karmic impulse, awakened the divine fire in our own selves,gave us light and comprehension and understanding. From that time we ourselves became "sons of thegods," the faculty of self-consciousness in us was awakened, our eyes were opened, responsibilitybecame ours; and our feet were set then definitely upon the path, that inner path, quiet, wonderful,leading us inwards back to our spiritual home.The manasaputras are our higher natures and, paradoxical as it is, are more largely evolved beings thanwe are. They were the spiritual entities who "quickened" our personal egos, which were thus evolved intoself-consciousness, relatively small though that yet be. One, and yet many! As you can light an infinitenumber of candles from one lighted candle, so from a spark of consciousness can you quicken andenliven innumerable other consciousnesses, lying, so to speak, in sleep or latent in the life-atoms.These manasaputras, children of mahat, are said to have quickened and enlightened in us themanas-manas of our manas septenary, because they themselves are typically manasic in their essentialcharacteristic or svabhava. Their own essential or manasic vibrations, so to say, could cause that essenceof manas in ourselves to vibrate in sympathy, much as the sounding of a musical note will causesympathetic response in something like it, a similar note in other things. (See also Agnishvattas)

Manasvin (Sanskrit) Manasvin [from manas mind] Of the nature of intelligence; those essentially intellectual and even spiritual dhyanis or solar pitris who endowed man with intellectually spiritual and mental powers of understanding and self-consciousness. A variant of manasas, kumaras, vairajas, manasaputras, and agnishvattas; hence the manasvin are identified with the human egos.

Mediator An agent who stands or goes between, specifically one who acts as the conscious agent or intermediary of special spiritual power and knowledge. Most often applied to highly-evolved characters who mediate, not only between superhuman spiritual entities and ordinary men, but who also themselves consciously unite their own spiritual nature with their merely human souls. Such people attain to this lofty state by the great sanctity and wisdom of their lives, aided by frequent interior ecstatic contemplation. They radiate a pure and beneficent atmosphere which invites, and is congenial to, exalted spiritual beings of the solar system. Evil entities of the astral realms cannot endure their clean and highly magnetic aura, nor are they able to continue obsessing other unfortunate persons if the mediator be present and will their departure, or even approaches the sufferer. This powerful spiritual self-consciousness of the individual who is a mediator reaching upwards to superior spiritual realms, is in sharpest possible contrast with the passive, unconscious, weak-willed medium who, through ignorance or folly, becomes the agent for the use of any astral entity that may be attracted to the entranced body. Apollonius, Iamblichus, Plotinus, and Porphyry are examples of mediators: “but if the temple is defiled by the admission of an evil passion, thought or desire, the mediator falls into the sphere of sorcery. The door is opened; the pure spirits retire and the evil ones rush in. This is still mediatorship, evil as it is; the sorcerer, like the pure magician, forms his own aura and subjects to his will congenial inferior spirits” (IU 1:487).

MENTAL SELF Monad having its most important kind of self-consciousness in molecular world 47:4-7 within the solar system. Mental selves belonging to the human kingdom are at the stage of humanity.

Metaphysics. Pure Idealism or Immaterialism identifies ontological reality (substance, substantives, concrete individuality) exclusively with the ideal, ie., Mind, Spirit, Soul, Person, Archetypal Ideas, Thought. See Spiritualism, Mentalism, Monadism, Panpsychtsm, Idealistic Phenomenalism. With respect to the metaphysical status of self-consciousness and purposeful activity, Idealism is either impersonalistic or personalistic. See Personalism.

Mind-born Born of imagination and will — through kriyasakti, the power of thought and mind — not begotten or produced by any physical mode of procreation. It sometimes refers to sons of will and yoga, sons of wisdom, spiritual dhyanis, sons of the prajapatis, mind-born sons of Brahma, etc. They were the ancestors of the self-conscious human races first appearing numerously during the fourth round, and otherwise known as solar lhas, solar spirits, angishvattas, manasaputras, dhyani-chohans. They had been self-conscious men in a former embodiment of the earth-chain, and it was their lot to awaken self-conscious mind in the mankind of this round. They entered the early third root-race and awakened the intellectual fire in them. The manasas rejected some earlier subraces as unfit vehicles for themselves, hence as refusing to “create,” i.e., emanate mind from themselves to inform these unready or unevolved human vehicles. The mind-born sons of the early third root-race were the first themselves to arouse the fire of mind in the unself-conscious human vehicles, and were the highest and therefore the least affected by such lower contact. Retaining their self-consciousness in full and therefore not falling into oblivion, these were the first founders as fully self-conscious humans of the earliest groups of god-inspired men, the forerunners of what later became the ancient Mysteries. A branch of these entities has continued from immemorial time as the Great Lodge of the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion.

Modern Period. In the 17th century the move towards scientific materialism was tempered by a general reliance on Christian or liberal theism (Galileo, Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Gassendi, Toland, Hartley, Priestley, Boyle, Newton). The principle of gravitation was regarded by Newton, Boyle, and others, as an indication of the incompleteness of the mechanistic and materialistic account of the World, and as a direct proof of the existence of God. For Newton Space was the "divine sensorium". The road to pure modern idealism was laid by the epistemological idealism (epistemological subjectivism) of Campanella and Descartes. The theoretical basis of Descartes' system was God, upon whose moral perfection reliance must be placed ("God will not deceive us") to insure the reality of the physical world. Spinoza's impersonalistic pantheism is idealistic to the extent that space or extension (with modes of Body and Motion) is merely one of the infinity of attributes of Being. Leibniz founded pure modern idealism by his doctrine of the immateriality and self-active character of metaphysical individual substances (monads, souls), whose source and ground is God. Locke, a theist, gave chief impetus to the modern theory of the purely subjective character of ideas. The founder of pure objective idealism in Europe was Berkeley, who shares with Leibniz the creation of European immaterialism. According to him perception is due to the direct action of God on finite persons or souls. Nature consists of (a) the totality of percepts and their order, (b) the activity and thought of God. Hume later an implicit Naturalist, earlier subscribed ambiguously to pure idealistic phenomenalism or scepticism. Kant's epistemological, logical idealism (Transcendental or Critical Idealism) inspired the systems of pure speculative idealism of the 19th century. Knowledge, he held, is essentially logical and relational, a product of the synthetic activity of the logical self-consciousness. He also taught the ideality of space and time. Theism, logically undemonstrable, remains the choice of pure speculative reason, although beyond the province of science. It is also a practical implication of the moral life. In the Critique of Judgment Kant, marshalled facts from natural beauty and the apparent teleological character of the physical and biological world, to leave a stronger hint in favor of the theistic hypothesis. His suggestion thit reality, as well as Mind, is organic in character is reflected in the idealistic pantheisms of his followers: Fichte (abstract personalism or "Subjective Idealism"), Schellmg (aesthetic idealism, theism, "Objective Idealism"), Hegel (Absolute or logical Idealism), Schopenhauer (voluntaristic idealism), Schleiermacher (spiritual pantheism), Lotze ("Teleological Idealism"). 19th century French thought was grounder in the psychological idealism of Condillac and the voluntaristic personalism of Biran. Throughout the century it was essentially "spiritualistic" or personalistic (Cousin, Renouvier, Ravaisson, Boutroux, Lachelier, Bergson). British thought after Hume was largely theistic (A. Smith, Paley, J. S. Mill, Reid, Hamilton). In the latter 19th century, inspired largely by Kant and his metaphysical followers, it leaned heavily towards semi-monistic personalism (E. Caird, Green, Webb, Pringle-Pattison) or impersonalistic monism (Bradley, Bosanquet). Recently a more pluralistic personalism has developed (F. C. S. Schiller, A. E. Taylor, McTaggart, Ward, Sorley). Recent American idealism is represented by McCosh, Howison, Bowne, Royce, Wm. James (before 1904), Baldwin. German idealists of the past century include Fechner, Krause, von Hartmann, H. Cohen, Natorp, Windelband, Rickert, Dilthey, Brentano, Eucken. In Italy idealism is represented by Croce and Gentile, in Spain, by Unamuno and Ortega e Gasset; in Russia, by Lossky, in Sweden, by Boström; in Argentina, by Aznar. (For other representatives of recent or contemporary personalism, see Personalism.) -- W.L.

More important, however, than these biological facts was the awakening of mind, of self-conscious thinking, inaugurated by the descent of the manasaputras who not only at first projected sparks of their own full self-consciousness into the innocent and unthinking humanity of that early time, but who likewise so stimulated the appearance of mind that the latter finally became common in differing degrees to the entire human stock. See also LEMURIA

Nishida Kitaro. (西田幾太郎) (1870-1945). Influential Japanese philosopher of the modern era and founder of what came to be known as the KYOTO SCHOOL, a contemporary school of Japanese philosophy that sought to synthesize ZEN Buddhist thought with modern Western, and especially Germanic, philosophy. Nishida was instrumental in establishing in Japan the discipline of philosophy as practiced in Europe and North America, as well as in exploring possible intersections between European philosophy and such Buddhist ontological notions as the idea of nonduality (ADVAYA). Nishida was born in 1870, just north of Ishikawa prefecture's capital city of Kanazawa. In 1894, he graduated from Tokyo Imperial University with a degree in philosophy and eventually took an appointment at Kyoto University, where he taught from 1910 until his retirement in 1927. At Kyoto University, Nishida attracted a group of students who would later become known collectively as the "Kyoto School." These philosophers addressed an array of philosophical concerns, including metaphysics, ontology, phenomenology, and epistemology, using Western critical methods but in conjunction with Eastern religious concepts. Nishida's influential 1911 publication Zen no kenkyu ("A Study of Goodness") synthesized Zen Buddhist and German phenomenology to explore the unity between the ordinary and the transcendent. He argued that, through "pure experience" (J. junsui keiken), an individual human being is able to come in contact with a limitless, absolute reality that can be described either as God or emptiness (suNYATĀ). In Nishida's treatment, philosophy is subsumed under the broader soteriological quest for individual awakening, and its significance derives from its effectiveness in bringing about this goal of awakening. Other important works by Nishida include Jikaku ni okeru chokkan to hansei ("Intuition and Reflection in Self-Consciousness," 1917), Geijutsu to dotoku ("Art and Morality," 1923), Tetsugaku no konpon mondai ("Fundamental Problems of Philosophy," 1933), and Bashoteki ronri to shukyoteki sekaikan ("The Logic of the Place of Nothingness and the Religious Worldview," 1945). Nishida's Zen no kenkyu also helped lay the foundation for what later became regarded as Nihonjinron, a nationalist discourse that advocated the uniqueness and superiority of the Japanese race. Prominent in Nishida's philosophy is the idea that the Japanese-as exemplified in their exceptional cultivation of Zen, which here can stand for both Zen Buddhism and the homophonous word for "goodness"-are uniquely in tune with this concept of "pure experience." This familiarity, in part influenced by his longtime friend DAISETZ TEITARO SUZUKI, elevates the Japanese race mentally and spiritually above all other races in the world. This view grew in popularity during the era of Japanese colonial expansion and remained strong in some quarters even after the end of World War II. Since at least the 1970s, Nishida's work has been translated and widely read among English-speaking audiences. Beginning in the 1990s, however, his writings have come under critical scrutiny in light of their ties with Nihonjinron and Japanese nationalism.

OBJECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS The ability of consciousness to directly observe its own kind of matter. Instances are the sense perceptions of the organism in the physical world. Objective self-consciousness implies simultaneous awareness of the self as the centre of perception: I am seeing this.

Sense is another word for objective consciousness. (K 1.17.2)


OBJECTIVIZATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS &

Paramartha (Sanskrit) Paramārtha [from parama highest, sublime + artha comprehension, aim] True or supreme self-consciousness; also a great mystic work, which according to legend is said to have been delivered to Nagarjuna by ancient initiates.

Paramatman(Sanskrit) ::: The "primordial self" or the "self beyond," the permanent SELF, the Brahman or universalspirit-soul. A compound term meaning the highest or universal atman. Parama, "primordial," "supreme,"etc.; the root of atman is hardly known -- its origin is uncertain, but the general meaning is that of "self."Paramatman consequently means the "supreme self," or the summit or flower of a hierarchy, theroot-base or source of that kosmic self.Selflessness is the attribute of the paramatman, the universal self, where all personality vanishes.The universal self is the heart of the universe, for these two phrases are but two manners of expressingthe same thing; it is the source of our being; it is also the goal whither we are all marching, we and thehierarchies above us as well as the hierarchies and the entities which compose them inferior to us. Allcome from the same ineffable source, the heart of Being, the universal self, pass at one period of theirevolutionary journey through the stage of humanity, gaining thereby self-consciousness or the ego-self,the "I am I," and they find it, as they advance along this evolutionary path, expanding gradually intouniversal consciousness -- an expansion which never has an end, because the universal consciousness isendless, limitless, boundless.The paramatman is spiritually practically identical with what the theosophist has in mind when he speaksof the Absolute; and consequently paramatman, though possessing a wide range of meanings, is virtuallyidentical with Brahman. Of course when the human mind or consciousness ascends in meditation up therungs of the endless ladder of life and realizes that the paramatman of one hierarchy or kosmos is but oneof a multitude of other paramatmans of other kosmic hierarchies, the realization comes that even thevague term parabrahman may at certain moments of philosophical introspection be found to be thefrontierless paramatman of boundless space; but in this last usage of paramatman the word obviouslybecomes a sheer generalizing expression for boundless life, boundless consciousness, boundlesssubstance. This last use of the word, while correct enough, is hardly to be recommended because apt tointroduce confusion, especially in Occidental minds with our extraordinary tendency to takegeneralizations for concrete realities.

Personality In distinguishing between individuality and personality, individuality is the simple fact of essential self-consciousness, the recognition that “I am I”; whereas personality is saying that “I am Mr. Smith.” In other words, individuality is the recognition of oneself as a distinct non-partite egoity, and personality is the identifying of oneself with a particular aggregate of qualities, the latter serving as vehicle for the individuality.

Philosophy of Effort: The theory that in the self-consciousness of effort the person becomes one with reality. Consciousness of effort is self-consciousness. Used by Maine de Biran. -- R.T.F.

pratyaksa. (T. mngon sum; C. xianliang; J. genryo; K. hyollyang 現量). In Sanskrit, "direct perception," cognition that is unmistaken in the sense that it correctly apprehends qualities such as shape and color, and is nonconceptual, in the sense that it does not perceive its object through the medium of an image, as does thought (KALPANĀ). In Buddhist epistemology, direct perception is one of only two forms of valid knowledge (PRAMĀnA), along with inference (ANUMĀNA). Four types of direct perception are enumerated. The first is sensory direct perception, in which the five external sense objects are perceived directly by the sense consciousnesses (VIJNĀNA), in reliance on the five sense organs (INDRIYA). This form of direct perception is to be differentiated from SAMJNĀ, also sometimes translated as "perception." The latter term refers to the specific function of consciousness to apprehend the various characteristics of a given object or to differentiate between two objects. The second kind of direct perception is mental direct perception (MANONUBHAVAPRATYAKsA), which, according to one interpretation, includes a brief and unnoticed moment of direct perception by the mind at the end of sensory direct perception, with that moment of mental direct perception inducing the conceptual cognition of the object. Mental direct perception also includes the five ABHIJNĀ, which result from states of deep concentration. The third type is self-knowing direct perception (svasaMvedana), a function of self-consciousness, which observes a consciousness apprehending its object. It is this form of direct perception that makes possible memory of former moments of consciousness. The fourth type is yogic direct perception (YOGIPRATYAKsA), which occurs only on one of the noble paths (ĀRYAMĀRGA), where the truth is directly perceived through a union of sAMATHA and VIPAsYANĀ.

Pratyeka-yana (Sanskrit) Pratyeka-yāna [from prati towards, for + eka one + yāna vehicle, path] The path of each one for himself, or the personal vehicle or ego, equivalent to the Pali pachcheka. Fully self-conscious being cannot ever be achieved by following the path for oneself, but solely by following the amrita-yana (immortal vehicle) or the path of self-consciousness in immortality, the spiritual path to a nirvana of high degree, the secret path as taught by the heart doctrine. The pratyeka-yana is the pathway of the personality, the vegetative or material path to a nirvana of a low degree, the open path, as taught by the eye doctrine. These two terms describe two kinds of advancement towards more spiritual things, and the two ultimate goals thereof: the amrita-yana of the Buddhas of Compassion, and the pratyeka-yana of the Pratyeka Buddhas.

Pythia or Pythoness (Greek) Pytho was an older name for Delphi, and from it was formed the adjective Pythius, in the feminine Pythia. This was applied to the priestess or seeress who gave the oracles of Apollo at Delphi. “On the authority of Iamblichus, Plutarch and others, a Pythia was a priestess chosen among the sensitive of the poorer classes, and placed in a temple where oracular powers were exercised. There she had a room secluded from all but the chief Hierophant and Seer, and once admitted, was, like a nun, lost to the world. Sitting on a tripod of brass placed over a fissure in the ground, through which arose intoxicating vapours, these subterranean exhalations, penetrating her whole system, produced the prophetic mania, in which abnormal state she delivered oracles. Aristophanes in ‘Vaestas’ [Vespae] I., reg. 28, calls the Pythia ventriloqua vates or the ‘ventriloquial prophetess,’ on account of her stomach-voice. The ancients placed the soul of man (the lower Manas) or his personal self-consciousness, in the pit of his stomach. . . . The navel was regarded in antiquity as ‘the circle of the sun,’ the seat of divine internal light. Therefore was the oracle of Apollo at Delphi, the city of Delphus, the womb or abdomen — while the seat of the temple was called the omphalos, navel” (TG 266-7).

Ring-Pass-Not ::: A profoundly mystical and suggestive term signifying the circle or bounds or frontiers within which iscontained the consciousness of those who are still under the sway of the delusion of separateness -- andthis applies whether the ring be large or small. It does not signify any one especial occasion or condition,but is a general term applicable to any state in which an entity, having reached a certain stage ofevolutionary growth of the unfolding of consciousness, finds itself unable to pass into a still higher statebecause of some delusion under which the consciousness is laboring, be that delusion mental or spiritual.There is consciously a ring-pass-not for every globe of the planetary chain, a ring-pass-not for theplanetary chain itself, a ring-pass-not for the solar system, and so forth. It is the entities who labor underthe delusion who therefore actually create their own rings-pass-not, for these are not actual entitativematerial frontiers, but boundaries of consciousness.A ring-pass-not furthermore may perhaps be said with great truth to be somewhat of the nature of aspiritual laya-center or point of transmission between plane and plane of consciousness.The rings-pass-not as above said, however, have to do with phases or states of consciousness only. Forinstance, the ring-pass-not for the beasts is self-consciousness, i.e., the beasts have not yet been enabledto develop forth their consciousness to the point of self-consciousness or reflective consciousness exceptin minor degree. A dog, for example, located in a room which it desires to leave, will run to a door out ofwhich it is accustomed to go and will sit there whining for the door to be opened. Its consciousnessrecognizes the point of egress, but it has not developed the self-conscious mental activity to open thedoor.A general ring-pass-not for humanity is their inability to self-consciously participate in spiritualself-consciousness.

Samadhi (Sanskrit) Samādhi [from sam with, together + ā towards + the verbal root dhā to place, bring] To direct towards; to combine the mental faculties towards an object. Self-consciousness union with the spiritual monad by intense and profound spiritual contemplation or meditation. It implies “the complete abstraction of the percipient consciousness from all worldly, or exterior, or even mental concerns or attributes, and its . . . becoming the pure unadulterate, undilute super-consciousness of the god within. . . . Samadhi is the eighth or final stage of genuine occult Yoga, and can be attained at any time by the initiate without conscious recourse to the other phases or practices of Yoga enumerated in Oriental works, and which other and inferior practices are often misleading, in some cases distinctly injurious, and at the best mere props or aids in the attaining of complete mental abstraction from worldly concerns” (OG 150-1). The seeker on attaining samadhi becomes practically omniscient for his solar universe because his consciousness is functioning in the cosmic spiritual and causal worlds.

Sambhogakaya (Sanskrit) Sambhogakāya [from sambhoga enjoyment together, delightful participation + kāya body] Participation body; the second of the trikaya (three glorious vestures) of Buddhism, the highest being dharmakaya, and the lowest nirmanakaya. A buddha in the sambhogakaya state still retains his individual self-consciousness and sense of egoity, and is able to be conscious to a certain extent of the world of men and its griefs and sorrows, but has little power or impulse to render aid. See also TRIKAYA; TRISARANA; TRAILOKYA

Sambhogakaya(Sanskrit) ::: This is a compound of two words meaning "enjoyment-body," or rather "participation-body";sambhoga meaning "enjoyment together," or "delightful participation," etc.; and kaya, meaning "body."This is the second of the glorious vestures, the other two being dharmakaya, the highest, andnirmanakaya, the lowest. The buddha in the sambhogakaya state still participates in, still retains more orless, his self-consciousness as an individual, his egoship and his individual soul-sense, though he is toofar above material or personal concerns to care about or to meddle with them. In consequence, a buddhain the sambhogakaya state would be virtually powerless here on our material earth.

Samvriti (Sanskrit) Saṃvṛti [prefix sam + the verbal root vṛt to enclose; to cover, to involve] The holding of “false conception,” because the percipient ego is enclosed or covered or involved with material energies and powers. Samvriti hence may be called the origin of all illusion or maya. “One has to acquire true Self-Consciousness in order to understand Samvriti or the ‘origin of delusion’.” (SD 1:44n)

SECOND SELF Monad having objective self-consciousness in any of the three units of the second triad, individual of the fifth kingdom. They are divided into causal selves (47:1), essential selves (46:1) and superessential selves (45:4).

Self-consciousness Awareness of oneself as the experiencer, attribution of one’s experiences to an ego, consciousness of being a separate individual; whereas consciousness in the abstract is merely awareness of the experience. Animals and very young children are conscious, man is self-conscious; yet the adult, when engrossed in an experience, may lose his self-consciousness for a while. But even man is only partially self-conscious, because he can contemplate only part of his being; that in him which is now the contemplator may become part of what is contemplated. As the subject, the knower, shifts upwards and inwards, so to speak, more and more of the vestures pass into the category of objects or what is known. The Unknown manifests the universe in order to attain full self-consciousness; and in man, the microcosm, an unself-conscious spark of divinity passes through stages of evolution and experience in order to achieve relatively full self-consciousness. The potentiality of self-consciousness, however, is in every atom. In order to become self-conscious, spirit must pass through every cycle of cosmic being, until every ego has attained full self-consciousness as a human being or equivalent entity. Man’s self-consciousness depends on his triple nature; it is man who is the separator of the One into various contrasted aspects.

Self-consciousness: The knowledge by the self of itself.

Self-Consciousness: The knowledge by the self of itself. The term is usually restricted to empirical self-consciousness. (See Empirical Ego) -- L.W.

SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS The monad&

SELF, THE By the term monad is meant the individual as a primordial atom and by self the individual&

-SELF The term -self in reference to an individual (a 45-self, for instance) indicates the highest world in which he has acquired full subjective and objective self-consciousness and ability of self-activity.

By first, second, and third selves are meant monads that have self-consciousness and ability of self-activity in their first, second, and third triads, respectively. Man is a first self. The individuals in the fifth natural kingdom are second selves; and those in the sixth natural kingdom, third selves.


Speech The vocal expression of thought in language, which implies the existence of mind which has reached self-consciousness on this plane, was not fully developed in mankind until the fourth root-race. The first root-race was devoid of mind on our plane; the second had a sound language of vowels, and its speech was largely onomatopoetic in character; the third developed in its beginning a speech which was little better than what are now known as animal sounds, but towards its end the first approximately fully developed human beings had monosyllabic speech, after the awakening of their minds by the manasaputras. Before that there was communication by what may be called thought-transference. After this monosyllabic speech, came the agglutinative, spoken by some Atlantean races, and then the inflectional language of the fifth root-race, represented by Sanskrit and its derivatives, and closely related languages such as Greek and Latin.

SPIRIT—The Invisible and incorporeal principle in man; the principle of self-consciousness, self-activity and of rational power in general; that which signifies a likeness in man to the Divine Being.

Spirituality Considering spirit and matter as contrasted aspects in the evolutionary process, as opposite poles in the kosmos, this word applied to the higher or causal aspect. The course of evolution, the monad begins as an unself-conscious god-spark and ends its evolutionary career in any one universe as a self-conscious god. The monads pass from spirit into matter, and then back again to spirit with the addition of evolved intellectual self-cognition or self-consciousness. So far as the rounds and races of our earth is concerned, the first two were characterized by direct but non-egoic spiritual qualities of consciousness, while in the third intellectuality and finally materiality began strongly to make their appearances, reaching the final evolutionary point for our planet in the fourth, when spirituality was nearly submerged by materiality. But these terms are relative, having varying meanings as applied to different planes and differing conditions of the rounds and races. Absolute spirituality or perfection in its very nature implies the loftiest type of spiritual and intellectual activity, with the relative quiescence of the enshrouding sheaths of consciousness. The distinction is to a certain degree that drawn between absolute thought or the All as opposed to the ratiocinative activity of mental action, which involves limitations and matters (SD 2:490).

SUBMANIFESTAL SELF, 44-SELF Monad having its highest kind of envelope and self-consciousness in the submanifestal world of the solar system (44).

SUPERCONSCIOUS To the superconscious belong all not yet self-activated domains of consciousness in the molecular kinds of the individual's different envelopes. Development consists in self-activating consciousness and thereby to acquire self-consciousness in these molecular kinds. K 1.22.4

SUPERESSENTIAL SELF, 45-SELF Monad having its highest kind of envelope and self-consciousness in the superessential world of the solar system. The superessential self belongs to the fifth natural kingdom.

As regards consciousness, a 45-self is to a man as a man is to a plant. K
1.35.15


Sutratman(Sanskrit) ::: A compound word meaning "thread-self," the golden thread of individuality -- the stream ofself-consciousness -- on which all the substance-principles of man's constitution are strung, so to say, likepearls on a golden chain. The sutratman is the stream of consciousness-life running through all thevarious substance-principles of the constitution of the human entity -- or indeed of any other entity. Eachsuch pearl on the golden chain is one of the countless personalities which man uses during the course ofhis manvantara-long evolutionary progress. The sutratman, therefore, may be briefly said to be theimmortal or spiritual monadic ego, the individuality which incarnates in life after life, and therefore isrightly called the thread-self or fundamental self.It is this sutratman, this thread-self, this consciousness-stream, or rather stream of consciousness-life,which is the fundamental and individual selfhood of every entity, and which, reflected in and through theseveral intermediate vehicles or veils or sheaths or garments of the invisible constitution of man, or ofany other being in which a monad enshrouds itself, produces the egoic centers of self-consciousexistence. The sutratman, therefore, is rooted in the monad, the monadic essence.

Sutratman (Sanskrit) Sūtrātman [from sūtra thread + ātman self] The thread-self; the golden thread of self-conscious individuality, the stream of egoic self-consciousness, on which all the substance-principles are strung like pearls on a golden chain. It is this sutratman, or stream of egoic consciousness-life, “which is the fundamental Selfhood in all beings, and which, reflected in and through the several intermediate vehicles or veils or sheaths or garments of the invisible constitution of man, or of any other being in which the Monad enshrouds itself, produces the egoic centers of self-conscious existence.

TERTIARY MATTER Evolutionary matter in a first phase with incipient self-active consciousness. Instances are all matter in the physical world (49:2-7) and, where higher worlds are concerned, the triad atoms and molecules as well as the matter of the centres of human envelopes. The self-activity of tertiary matter does not imply self-consciousness, which is possible only for quaternary matter.

The process of evolution cannot be considered as ending. Just as below human beings there are less evolved kingdoms, so above are beings in whom fuller self-consciousness has been achieved than we have yet achieved, and still more of the divine potentialities realized. All evolution beneath humankind tends towards humanhood as its objective; but humanity itself has ever greater heights still before it to attain in the future.

There is a conceptive self-extension of being which works itself out in the universe as substance or object of consciousness and which cosmic Mind and Life in their creative action represent through atomic division and aggregation as the thing we call Matter. But this Matter, like Mind and Life, is still Being or Brahman in its self-creative action. It is a form of the force of conscious Being, a form given by Mind and realised by Life. It holds within it as its own reality consciousness concealed from itself, involved and absorbed in the result of its own self-formation and th
   refore self-oblivious. And, however brute and void of sense it seems to us, it is yet, to the secret experience of the consciousness hidden within it, delight of being offering itself to this secret consciousness as object of sensation in order to tempt that hidden godhead out of its secrecy. Being manifest as substance, force of Being cast into form, into a figured selfrepresentation of the secret self-consciousness, delight offering itself to its own consciousness as an object,—what is this but Sachchidananda? Matter is Sachchidananda represented to His ownmental experience as a formal basis of objective knowledge, action and delight of existence.
   Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 253


There is a Three-in-One within every human being: “Rudimentary man . . . becomes the perfect man . . . when, with the development of ‘Spiritual Fire,’ the noumenon of the ‘Three in One’ within his Self, he acquires from his inner Self, or Instructor, the Wisdom of Self-Consciousness, which he does not possess in the beginning” (SD 2:113).

The rudras are highly intellectual and spiritual entities, having through previous evolutionary periods attained self-consciousness by individually passing through the equivalent of the human kingdom. The rudras represent an aggregate of entities in the primary formation of worlds, as well as the intellectually informing principles of man. They are mythologically said to be at war with the shadowy entities and powers of the lower spheres, and hence are sometimes spoken of as the destroyers of outward forms. The Vishnu-Purana states that “at the end of a thousand periods of four ages, which complete a day of Brahma, the earth is almost exhausted. The eternal Avyaya (Vishnu) assumes then the character of Rudra (the destroyer, Siva) and re-unites all his creatures to himself. He enters the Seven rays of the Sun and drinks up all the waters of the globe; he causes the moisture to evaporate, thus drying up the whole Earth. . . . Thus fed with abundant moisture the seven solar rays become seven suns by dilation, and they finally set the world on fire. Hari, the destroyer of all things, who is ‘the flame of time, Kalagni,’ finally consumes the Earth. Then Rudra, becoming Janardana, breathes clouds and rain” (6:3).

“These advanced entities are otherwise known as the Solar Lhas, as the Tibetans call them, the solar spirits, who were the men of a former kalpa, and who during the third Root-race thus sacrifice themselves in order to give us intellectual light — incarnating in those senseless psycho-physical shells in order to awaken the divine flame of egoity and self-consciousness in the sleeping egos which we then were. They are ourselves because belonging to the same spirit-ray that we do; yet we, more strictly speaking, were those half-unconscious, half-awakened egos whom they touched with the divine fire of their own being. This, our ‘awakening,’ was called by H. P. Blavatsky, the incarnation of the Manasaputras, or the Sons of Mind or Light. Had that incarnation not taken place, we indeed should have continued our evolution by merely ‘natural’ causes, but it would have been slow almost beyond comprehension, almost interminable; but that act of self-sacrifice, through their immense pity, their immense love, though, indeed, acting under Karmic impulse, awakened the divine fire in our own selves, gave us light and comprehension and understanding; and from that time we ourselves became ‘Sons of the Gods,’ the faculty of self-consciousness in us was awakened, our eyes were opened, responsibility became ours; and our feet were set then definitely upon the path, that inner path, quiet, wonderful, leading us inwards back to our spiritual home. . . .

The term consciousness is often used as alternative to spirit, as where it is said that consciousness and matter are the two aspects of parabrahman or that consciousness is the purest form of cosmic force; yet, strictly speaking, consciousness is an attribute of active spirit. It is sometimes called the universal life, the kosmic force-substance. The relative use of the word enables us to speak of states or degrees of consciousness, according to the state in which the essence is manifested on one plane or another; or to call one state unconscious by contrast with another, as when we compare waking consciousness with the consciousness of sleep or trance. See also SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS

THIRD SELF Monads having objective self-consciousness in someone of the three units of the third triad, individuals in the sixth natural kingdom (first divine kingdom). They are divided into superessential selves (45:1), submanifestal selves (44:1), and manifestal selves (43:4).

This is because our original being is the absolute in full possession of its infinite and illimitable self-consciousness and self-power; a self-possession whose other name is self-delight. And in proportion as the relative touches upon that self-possession, it moves towards satisfaction, touches delight.
   Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 99


Three senses of "Ockhamism" may be distinguished: Logical, indicating usage of the terminology and technique of logical analysis developed by Ockham in his Summa totius logicae; in particular, use of the concept of supposition (suppositio) in the significative analysis of terms. Epistemological, indicating the thesis that universality is attributable only to terms and propositions, and not to things as existing apart from discourse. Theological, indicating the thesis that no tneological doctrines, such as those of God's existence or of the immortality of the soul, are evident or demonstrable philosophically, so that religious doctrine rests solely on faith, without metaphysical or scientific support. It is in this sense that Luther is often called an Ockhamist.   Bibliography:   B. Geyer,   Ueberwegs Grundriss d. Gesch. d. Phil., Bd. II (11th ed., Berlin 1928), pp. 571-612 and 781-786; N. Abbagnano,   Guglielmo di Ockham (Lanciano, Italy, 1931); E. A. Moody,   The Logic of William of Ockham (N. Y. & London, 1935); F. Ehrle,   Peter von Candia (Muenster, 1925); G. Ritter,   Studien zur Spaetscholastik, I-II (Heidelberg, 1921-1922).     --E.A.M. Om, aum: (Skr.) Mystic, holy syllable as a symbol for the indefinable Absolute. See Aksara, Vac, Sabda. --K.F.L. Omniscience: In philosophy and theology it means the complete and perfect knowledge of God, of Himself and of all other beings, past, present, and future, or merely possible, as well as all their activities, real or possible, including the future free actions of human beings. --J.J.R. One: Philosophically, not a number but equivalent to unit, unity, individuality, in contradistinction from multiplicity and the mani-foldness of sensory experience. In metaphysics, the Supreme Idea (Plato), the absolute first principle (Neo-platonism), the universe (Parmenides), Being as such and divine in nature (Plotinus), God (Nicolaus Cusanus), the soul (Lotze). Religious philosophy and mysticism, beginning with Indian philosophy (s.v.), has favored the designation of the One for the metaphysical world-ground, the ultimate icility, the world-soul, the principle of the world conceived as reason, nous, or more personally. The One may be conceived as an independent whole or as a sum, as analytic or synthetic, as principle or ontologically. Except by mysticism, it is rarely declared a fact of sensory experience, while its transcendent or transcendental, abstract nature is stressed, e.g., in epistemology where the "I" or self is considered the unitary background of personal experience, the identity of self-consciousness, or the unity of consciousness in the synthesis of the manifoldness of ideas (Kant). --K.F.L. One-one: A relation R is one-many if for every y in the converse domain there is a unique x such that xRy. A relation R is many-one if for every x in the domain there is a unique y such that xRy. (See the article relation.) A relation is one-one, or one-to-one, if it is at the same time one-many and many-one. A one-one relation is said to be, or to determine, a one-to-one correspondence between its domain and its converse domain. --A.C. On-handedness: (Ger. Vorhandenheit) Things exist in the mode of thereness, lying- passively in a neutral space. A "deficient" form of a more basic relationship, termed at-handedness (Zuhandenheit). (Heidegger.) --H.H. Ontological argument: Name by which later authors, especially Kant, designate the alleged proof for God's existence devised by Anselm of Canterbury. Under the name of God, so the argument runs, everyone understands that greater than which nothing can be thought. Since anything being the greatest and lacking existence is less then the greatest having also existence, the former is not really the greater. The greatest, therefore, has to exist. Anselm has been reproached, already by his contemporary Gaunilo, for unduly passing from the field of logical to the field of ontological or existential reasoning. This criticism has been repeated by many authors, among them Aquinas. The argument has, however, been used, if in a somewhat modified form, by Duns Scotus, Descartes, and Leibniz. --R.A. Ontological Object: (Gr. onta, existing things + logos, science) The real or existing object of an act of knowledge as distinguished from the epistemological object. See Epistemological Object. --L.W. Ontologism: (Gr. on, being) In contrast to psychologism, is called any speculative system which starts philosophizing by positing absolute being, or deriving the existence of entities independently of experience merely on the basis of their being thought, or assuming that we have immediate and certain knowledge of the ground of being or God. Generally speaking any rationalistic, a priori metaphysical doctrine, specifically the philosophies of Rosmini-Serbati and Vincenzo Gioberti. As a philosophic method censored by skeptics and criticists alike, as a scholastic doctrine formerly strongly supported, revived in Italy and Belgium in the 19th century, but no longer countenanced. --K.F.L. Ontology: (Gr. on, being + logos, logic) The theory of being qua being. For Aristotle, the First Philosophy, the science of the essence of things. Introduced as a term into philosophy by Wolff. The science of fundamental principles, the doctrine of the categories. Ultimate philosophy; rational cosmology. Syn. with metaphysics. See Cosmology, First Principles, Metaphysics, Theology. --J.K.F. Operation: "(Lit. operari, to work) Any act, mental or physical, constituting a phase of the reflective process, and performed with a view to acquiring1 knowledge or information about a certain subject-nntter. --A.C.B.   In logic, see Operationism.   In philosophy of science, see Pragmatism, Scientific Empiricism. Operationism: The doctrine that the meaning of a concept is given by a set of operations.   1. The operational meaning of a term (word or symbol) is given by a semantical rule relating the term to some concrete process, object or event, or to a class of such processes, objectj or events.   2. Sentences formed by combining operationally defined terms into propositions are operationally meaningful when the assertions are testable by means of performable operations. Thus, under operational rules, terms have semantical significance, propositions have empirical significance.   Operationism makes explicit the distinction between formal (q.v.) and empirical sentences. Formal propositions are signs arranged according to syntactical rules but lacking operational reference. Such propositions, common in mathematics, logic and syntax, derive their sanction from convention, whereas an empirical proposition is acceptable (1) when its structure obeys syntactical rules and (2) when there exists a concrete procedure (a set of operations) for determining its truth or falsity (cf. Verification). Propositions purporting to be empirical are sometimes amenable to no operational test because they contain terms obeying no definite semantical rules. These sentences are sometimes called pseudo-propositions and are said to be operationally meaningless. They may, however, be 'meaningful" in other ways, e.g. emotionally or aesthetically (cf. Meaning).   Unlike a formal statement, the "truth" of an empirical sentence is never absolute and its operational confirmation serves only to increase the degree of its validity. Similarly, the semantical rule comprising the operational definition of a term has never absolute precision. Ordinarily a term denotes a class of operations and the precision of its definition depends upon how definite are the rules governing inclusion in the class.   The difference between Operationism and Logical Positivism (q.v.) is one of emphasis. Operationism's stress of empirical matters derives from the fact that it was first employed to purge physics of such concepts as absolute space and absolute time, when the theory of relativity had forced upon physicists the view that space and time are most profitably defined in terms of the operations by which they are measured. Although different methods of measuring length at first give rise to different concepts of length, wherever the equivalence of certain of these measures can be established by other operations, the concepts may legitimately be combined.   In psychology the operational criterion of meaningfulness is commonly associated with a behavioristic point of view. See Behaviorism. Since only those propositions which are testable by public and repeatable operations are admissible in science, the definition of such concepti as mind and sensation must rest upon observable aspects of the organism or its behavior. Operational psychology deals with experience only as it is indicated by the operation of differential behavior, including verbal report. Discriminations, or the concrete differential reactions of organisms to internal or external environmental states, are by some authors regarded as the most basic of all operations.   For a discussion of the role of operational definition in phvsics. see P. W. Bridgman, The Logic of Modern Physics, (New York, 1928) and The Nature of Physical Theory (Princeton, 1936). "The extension of operationism to psychology is discussed by C. C. Pratt in The Logic of Modem Psychology (New York. 1939.)   For a discussion and annotated bibliography relating to Operationism and Logical Positivism, see S. S. Stevens, Psychology and the Science of Science, Psychol. Bull., 36, 1939, 221-263. --S.S.S. Ophelimity: Noun derived from the Greek, ophelimos useful, employed by Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923) in economics as the equivalent of utility, or the capacity to provide satisfaction. --J.J.R. Opinion: (Lat. opinio, from opinor, to think) An hypothesis or proposition entertained on rational grounds but concerning which doubt can reasonably exist. A belief. See Hypothesis, Certainty, Knowledge. --J.K.F- Opposition: (Lat. oppositus, pp. of oppono, to oppose) Positive actual contradiction. One of Aristotle's Post-predicaments. In logic any contrariety or contradiction, illustrated by the "Square of Opposition". Syn. with: conflict. See Logic, formal, § 4. --J.K.F. Optimism: (Lat. optimus, the best) The view inspired by wishful thinking, success, faith, or philosophic reflection, that the world as it exists is not so bad or even the best possible, life is good, and man's destiny is bright. Philosophically most persuasively propounded by Leibniz in his Theodicee, according to which God in his wisdom would have created a better world had he known or willed such a one to exist. Not even he could remove moral wrong and evil unless he destroyed the power of self-determination and hence the basis of morality. All systems of ethics that recognize a supreme good (Plato and many idealists), subscribe to the doctrines of progressivism (Turgot, Herder, Comte, and others), regard evil as a fragmentary view (Josiah Royce et al.) or illusory, or believe in indemnification (Henry David Thoreau) or melioration (Emerson), are inclined optimistically. Practically all theologies advocating a plan of creation and salvation, are optimistic though they make the good or the better dependent on moral effort, right thinking, or belief, promising it in a future existence. Metaphysical speculation is optimistic if it provides for perfection, evolution to something higher, more valuable, or makes room for harmonies or a teleology. See Pessimism. --K.F.L. Order: A class is said to be partially ordered by a dyadic relation R if it coincides with the field of R, and R is transitive and reflexive, and xRy and yRx never both hold when x and y are different. If in addition R is connected, the class is said to be ordered (or simply ordered) by R, and R is called an ordering relation.   Whitehcid and Russell apply the term serial relation to relations which are transitive, irreflexive, and connected (and, in consequence, also asymmetric). However, the use of serial relations in this sense, instead ordering relations as just defined, is awkward in connection with the notion of order for unit classes.   Examples: The relation not greater than among leal numbers is an ordering relation. The relation less than among real numbers is a serial relation. The real numbers are simply ordered by the former relation. In the algebra of classes (logic formal, § 7), the classes are partially ordered by the relation of class inclusion.   For explanation of the terminology used in making the above definitions, see the articles connexity, reflexivity, relation, symmetry, transitivity. --A.C. Order type: See relation-number. Ordinal number: A class b is well-ordered by a dyadic relation R if it is ordered by R (see order) and, for every class a such that a ⊂ b, there is a member x of a, such that xRy holds for every member y of a; and R is then called a well-ordering relation. The ordinal number of a class b well-ordered by a relation R, or of a well-ordering relation R, is defined to be the relation-number (q. v.) of R.   The ordinal numbers of finite classes (well-ordered by appropriate relations) are called finite ordinal numbers. These are 0, 1, 2, ... (to be distinguished, of course, from the finite cardinal numbers 0, 1, 2, . . .).   The first non-finite (transfinite or infinite) ordinal number is the ordinal number of the class of finite ordinal numbers, well-ordered in their natural order, 0, 1, 2, . . .; it is usually denoted by the small Greek letter omega. --A.C.   G. Cantor, Contributions to the Founding of the Theory of Transfinite Numbers, translated and with an introduction by P. E. B. Jourdain, Chicago and London, 1915. (new ed. 1941); Whitehead and Russell, Princtpia Mathematica. vol. 3. Orexis: (Gr. orexis) Striving; desire; the conative aspect of mind, as distinguished from the cognitive and emotional (Aristotle). --G.R.M.. Organicism: A theory of biology that life consists in the organization or dynamic system of the organism. Opposed to mechanism and vitalism. --J.K.F. Organism: An individual animal or plant, biologically interpreted. A. N. Whitehead uses the term to include also physical bodies and to signify anything material spreading through space and enduring in time. --R.B.W. Organismic Psychology: (Lat. organum, from Gr. organon, an instrument) A system of theoretical psychology which construes the structure of the mind in organic rather than atomistic terms. See Gestalt Psychology; Psychological Atomism. --L.W. Organization: (Lat. organum, from Gr. organon, work) A structured whole. The systematic unity of parts in a purposive whole. A dynamic system. Order in something actual. --J.K.F. Organon: (Gr. organon) The title traditionally given to the body of Aristotle's logical treatises. The designation appears to have originated among the Peripatetics after Aristotle's time, and expresses their view that logic is not a part of philosophy (as the Stoics maintained) but rather the instrument (organon) of philosophical inquiry. See Aristotelianism. --G.R.M.   In Kant. A system of principles by which pure knowledge may be acquired and established.   Cf. Fr. Bacon's Novum Organum. --O.F.K. Oriental Philosophy: A general designation used loosely to cover philosophic tradition exclusive of that grown on Greek soil and including the beginnings of philosophical speculation in Egypt, Arabia, Iran, India, and China, the elaborate systems of India, Greater India, China, and Japan, and sometimes also the religion-bound thought of all these countries with that of the complex cultures of Asia Minor, extending far into antiquity. Oriental philosophy, though by no means presenting a homogeneous picture, nevertheless shares one characteristic, i.e., the practical outlook on life (ethics linked with metaphysics) and the absence of clear-cut distinctions between pure speculation and religious motivation, and on lower levels between folklore, folk-etymology, practical wisdom, pre-scientiiic speculation, even magic, and flashes of philosophic insight. Bonds with Western, particularly Greek philosophy have no doubt existed even in ancient times. Mutual influences have often been conjectured on the basis of striking similarities, but their scientific establishment is often difficult or even impossible. Comparative philosophy (see especially the work of Masson-Oursel) provides a useful method. Yet a thorough treatment of Oriental Philosophy is possible only when the many languages in which it is deposited have been more thoroughly studied, the psychological and historical elements involved in the various cultures better investigated, and translations of the relevant documents prepared not merely from a philological point of view or out of missionary zeal, but by competent philosophers who also have some linguistic training. Much has been accomplished in this direction in Indian and Chinese Philosophy (q.v.). A great deal remains to be done however before a definitive history of Oriental Philosophy may be written. See also Arabian, and Persian Philosophy. --K.F.L. Origen: (185-254) The principal founder of Christian theology who tried to enrich the ecclesiastic thought of his day by reconciling it with the treasures of Greek philosophy. Cf. Migne PL. --R.B.W. Ormazd: (New Persian) Same as Ahura Mazdah (q.v.), the good principle in Zoroastrianism, and opposed to Ahriman (q.v.). --K.F.L. Orphic Literature: The mystic writings, extant only in fragments, of a Greek religious-philosophical movement of the 6th century B.C., allegedly started by the mythical Orpheus. In their mysteries, in which mythology and rational thinking mingled, the Orphics concerned themselves with cosmogony, theogony, man's original creation and his destiny after death which they sought to influence to the better by pure living and austerity. They taught a symbolism in which, e.g., the relationship of the One to the many was clearly enunciated, and believed in the soul as involved in reincarnation. Pythagoras, Empedocles, and Plato were influenced by them. --K.F.L. Ortega y Gasset, Jose: Born in Madrid, May 9, 1883. At present in Buenos Aires, Argentine. Son of Ortega y Munillo, the famous Spanish journalist. Studied at the College of Jesuits in Miraflores and at the Central University of Madrid. In the latter he presented his Doctor's dissertation, El Milenario, in 1904, thereby obtaining his Ph.D. degree. After studies in Leipzig, Berlin, Marburg, under the special influence of Hermann Cohen, the great exponent of Kant, who taught him the love for the scientific method and awoke in him the interest in educational philosophy, Ortega came to Spain where, after the death of Nicolas Salmeron, he occupied the professorship of metaphysics at the Central University of Madrid. The following may be considered the most important works of Ortega y Gasset:     Meditaciones del Quijote, 1914;   El Espectador, I-VIII, 1916-1935;   El Tema de Nuestro Tiempo, 1921;   España Invertebrada, 1922;   Kant, 1924;   La Deshumanizacion del Arte, 1925;   Espiritu de la Letra, 1927;   La Rebelion de las Masas, 1929;   Goethe desde Adentio, 1934;   Estudios sobre el Amor, 1939;   Ensimismamiento y Alteracion, 1939;   El Libro de las Misiones, 1940;   Ideas y Creencias, 1940;     and others.   Although brought up in the Marburg school of thought, Ortega is not exactly a neo-Kantian. At the basis of his Weltanschauung one finds a denial of the fundamental presuppositions which characterized European Rationalism. It is life and not thought which is primary. Things have a sense and a value which must be affirmed independently. Things, however, are to be conceived as the totality of situations which constitute the circumstances of a man's life. Hence, Ortega's first philosophical principle: "I am myself plus my circumstances". Life as a problem, however, is but one of the poles of his formula. Reason is the other. The two together function, not by dialectical opposition, but by necessary coexistence. Life, according to Ortega, does not consist in being, but rather, in coming to be, and as such it is of the nature of direction, program building, purpose to be achieved, value to be realized. In this sense the future as a time dimension acquires new dignity, and even the present and the past become articulate and meaning-full only in relation to the future. Even History demands a new point of departure and becomes militant with new visions. --J.A.F. Orthodoxy: Beliefs which are declared by a group to be true and normative. Heresy is a departure from and relative to a given orthodoxy. --V.S. Orthos Logos: See Right Reason. Ostensible Object: (Lat. ostendere, to show) The object envisaged by cognitive act irrespective of its actual existence. See Epistemological Object. --L.W. Ostensive: (Lat. ostendere, to show) Property of a concept or predicate by virtue of which it refers to and is clarified by reference to its instances. --A.C.B. Ostwald, Wilhelm: (1853-1932) German chemist. Winner of the Nobel prize for chemistry in 1909. In Die Uberwindung des wissenschaftlichen Materialistmus and in Naturphilosophie, his two best known works in the field of philosophy, he advocates a dynamic theory in opposition to materialism and mechanism. All properties of matter, and the psychic as well, are special forms of energy. --L.E.D. Oupnekhat: Anquetil Duperron's Latin translation of the Persian translation of 50 Upanishads (q.v.), a work praised by Schopenhauer as giving him complete consolation. --K.F.L. Outness: A term employed by Berkeley to express the experience of externality, that is the ideas of space and things placed at a distance. Hume used it in the sense of distance Hamilton understood it as the state of being outside of consciousness in a really existing world of material things. --J.J.R. Overindividual: Term used by H. Münsterberg to translate the German überindividuell. The term is applied to any cognitive or value object which transcends the individual subject. --L.W. P

ULTIMATE SELF The self-consciousness of the monad.

Universal Self ::: The universal self is the heart of the universe, for these two phrases are but two manners of expressingthe same thing. It is the source of our being; it is also the goal whither we are all marching, we and thehierarchies above us as well as the hierarchies and the entities which compose them inferior to us. Allcome from the same ineffable source, the heart of being, the universal self. All pass at one period of theirevolutionary journey through the stage of humanity, gaining thereby self-consciousness or the ego-self,the "I am I," and they find this ego-self or consciousness, as they advance along this evolutionary path,expanding gradually into universal consciousness -- an expansion, however, which never has an end,because the universal consciousness is endless, limitless, boundless, and without any frontierswhatsoever. (See also Paramatman; Self)

WILL The will is dynamis acting through active consciousness.
Active consciousness is thus the ability of consciousness to let dynamis act through it.
The &


Yesh or Yeshut (&



QUOTES [6 / 6 - 419 / 419]


KEYS (10k)

   5 Sri Aurobindo
   1 they are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language

NEW FULL DB (2.4M)

   10 Jordan Peterson
   10 Jordan B Peterson
   8 Dan Simmons
   7 Ernest Becker
   6 Stephen Fry
   6 Sri Aurobindo
   6 Karl Marx
   5 Renee Carlino
   5 Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
   5 Albert Einstein
   5 Alan W Watts
   4 Sabrina Jeffries
   4 Nick Hornby
   4 Ludwig Feuerbach
   4 Jiddu Krishnamurti
   3 W E B Du Bois
   3 Robert Wright
   3 Ray Bradbury
   3 Osho
   3 Malcolm Gladwell

1:Memory is only a process of consciousness, a utility. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Memory, Self-Consciousness and the Ignorance,
2:The real truth of things lies not in their process, but behind it, in whatever determines, effects or governs the process. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Memory, Self-Consciousness and the Ignorance,
3:It's not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathing~they are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter and all the mad intensities that made and unmade me. ~ Stephen Fry,
4:Process is merely a utility; it is a habitual adoption of certain effective relations which might in the infinite possibility of things have been arranged otherwise, for the production of effects which might equally have been quite different. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Memory, Self-Consciousness and the Ignorance,
5:God is, is the first seed of Yoga. It is Tat Sat of the Vedanta. I am, is the second seed. It is So'ham of the Upanishads. God is infinite self-existence, self-conscious force of existence, self-diffused or self-concentrated delight of existence; I too am that infinite self-existence, self-consciousness, self-force, self-delight; this is the double third seed. It is Sachchidananda of the worldwide transcendental conclusion of all human thinking. Self-knowledge is the foundation of the complete Yoga. Affirm in yourselves self-knowledge.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human [T9],
6:The whole crux and difficulty of human life lies here. Man is this mental being, this mental consciousness working as mental force, aware in a way of the universal force and life of which he is part but, because he has not knowledge of its universality or even of the totality of his own being, unable to deal either with life in general or with his own life in a really effective and victorious movement of mastery. He seeks to know Matter in order to be master of the material environment, to know Life in order to be master of the vital existence, to know Mind in order to be master of the great obscure movement of mentality in which he is not only a jet of light of self-consciousness like the animal, but also more and more a flame of growing knowledge. Thus he seeks to know himself in order to be master of himself, to know the world in order to be master of the world. This is the urge of Existence in him, the necessity of the Consciousness he is, the impulsion of the Force that is his life, the secret will of Sachchidananda appearing as the individual in a world in which He expresses and yet seems to deny Himself. To find the conditions under which this inner impulsion is satisfied is the problem man must strive always to resolve and to that he is compelled by the very nature of his own existence and by the Deity seated within him; and until the problem is solved, the impulse satisfied, the human race cannot rest from its labour. Either man must fulfil himself by satisfying the Divine within him or he must produce out of himself a new and greater being who will be more capable of satisfying it. He must either himself become a divine humanity or give place to Superman.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine,

*** WISDOM TROVE ***

1:When matter stops, self-consciousness stops. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove
2:Art reaches its greatest peak when devoid of self-consciousness. ~ bruce-lee, @wisdomtrove
3:Apply horse-sense to ridding yourself of self-consciousness and ~ dale-carnegie, @wisdomtrove
4:Do things for others and you'll find your self-consciousness evaporating like morning dew. ~ dale-carnegie, @wisdomtrove
5:When self-consciousness stops, there is nothing -nothing left to stop, start, begin or end. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove
6:Man can become like God and acquire control over the whole universe if he multiplies infinitely his centre of self-consciousness. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove
7:Art reaches its greatest peak when devoid of self-consciousness. Freedom discovers man the moment he loses concern over what impression he is making or about to make. ~ bruce-lee, @wisdomtrove
8:Children are wise in a funny kind of way. They haven't developed so many vested interests of self. There is a wisdom, a lack of self-consciousness, that is innocence. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove
9:Illness is a part of every human being's experience. It enhances our perceptions and reduces self-consciousness. It is the great confessional; things are said, truths are blurted out which health conceals. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove
10:Immortality is freedom from the feeling: &
11:It is solely by risking life that freedom is obtained; . . . the individual who has not staked his or her life may, no doubt, be recognized as a Person; but he or she has not attained the truth of this recognition as an independent self-consciousness. ~ georg-wilhelm-friedrich-hegel, @wisdomtrove
12:However, when we shift our awareness or "frequency" from self-consciousness - where fear, impossibility or feelings of separation reside - to cosmic consciousness, which is in total harmony with the universe and where none of those feelings exist, then anything is possible. ~ rhonda-byrne, @wisdomtrove
13:Like too much alcohol,self-consciousness makes us see ourselves double, and we make the double image for two selves - mental and material, controlling and controlled, reflective and spontaneous. Thus instead of suffering we suffer about suffering, and suffer about suffering about suffering. ~ alan-watts, @wisdomtrove
14:A writer, or a beginning writer, is faced by the huge walls of self-consciousness. Most people think, "What if I say the wrong thing? What if I don't sound erudite and sophisticated? I'll be considered a fool." In time, with a lot of practice, you realize that's your foolishness is your gift. ~ richard-bach, @wisdomtrove
15:[I] put the question directly to myself: "Suppose that all your objects in life were realized; that all the changes in institutions and opinions which you are looking forward to, could be completely effected at this very instant: would this be a great joy and happiness to you?" And an irrepressible self-consciousness distinctly answered, "No! ~ john-stuart-mill, @wisdomtrove
16:Well, think of what I’m doing to you right now. For me I’m the self, and you’re the object. For you, of course, it’s the exact opposite you’re the self to you and I’m the object. And by exchanging self and object, we can project ourselves onto the other and gain self-consciousness. Volitionally.I still don’t get it, but it sure feels good.That’s the whole idea,the girl said. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove
17:She sat leaning back in her chair, looking ahead, knowing that he was as aware of her as she was of him. She found pleasure in the special self-consciousness it gave her. When she crossed her legs, when she leaned on her arm against the window sill, when she brushed her hair off her forehead - every movement of her body was underscored by a feeling the unadmitted words for which were: Is he seeing it? ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove
18:Our Christian destiny is, in fact, a great one: but we cannot achieve greatness unless we lose all interest in being great. For our own idea of greatness is illusory, and if we pay too much attention to it we will be lured out of the peace and stability of the being God gave us, and seek to live in a myth we have created for ourselves. And when we are truly ourselves we lose most of the futile self-consciousness that keeps us constantly comparing ourselves with others in order to see how big we are. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove
19:Mindfulness practice means that we commit fully in each moment to being present. There is no performance. There is just this moment. We are not trying to improve or to get anywhere else. We are not even running after special insights or visions. Nor are we forcing ourselves to be non-judgmental, calm, or relaxed. And we are certainly not promoting self-consciousness or indulging in self-preoccupation. Rather, we are simply inviting ourselves to interface with this moment in full awareness, with the intentino to embody as best we can an orientation of calmness, mindfulness, and equanimity right here and now. ~ jon-kabat-zinn, @wisdomtrove
20:After a heated dispute, we each undertook an assignment for the next class: to engage in one pleasurable activity and one philanthropic activity, and write about both. The results were life-changing. The afterglow of the pleasurable activity (hanging out with friends, or watching a movie, or eating a hot fudge sundae) paled in comparison with the effects of the kind action. When our philanthropic acts were spontaneous and called upon personal strengths, the whole day went better. One junior told about her nephew phoning for help with his third-grade arithmetic. After an hour of tutoring him, she was astonished to discover that for the rest of the day, I could listen better, I was mellower, and people liked me much more than usual. The exercise of kindness is a gratification, in contrast to a pleasure. As a gratification, it calls on your strengths to rise to an occasion and meet a challenge. Kindness is not accompanied by a separable stream of positive emotion like joy; rather, it consists in total engagement and in the loss of self-consciousness. Time stops. ~ martin-seligman, @wisdomtrove

*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***

1:then sensing her self-consciousness ~ Josephine Cox,
2:Self-consciousness kills communication. ~ Rick Steves,
3:...self-consciousness is a man's worst enemy. ~ Nick Hornby,
4:I think self-consciousness is in my bones. ~ Becky Albertalli,
5:When matter stops, self-consciousness stops. ~ Frederick Lenz,
6:Self-consciousness is the destroyer of erotic joy. ~ Ian McEwan,
7:Self-consciousness is the destroyer of erotic joy. ~ Ian Mcewan,
8:Self consciousness is the enemy of interestingness ~ Malcolm Gladwell,
9:self-consciousness is the enemy of “interestingness. ~ Malcolm Gladwell,
10:With the loss of self-consciousness, the landscape opens. ~ Barry Lopez,
11:We hit a stride where all self-consciousness disappeared. ~ Joshua Leonard,
12:An insane self-consciousness made him commit thousands of blunders. ~ Stendhal,
13:Does the poem reside in experience or in self-consciousness about experience? ~ Mark Doty,
14:self-consciousness is the source of all our knowledge of mental things. ~ Bertrand Russell,
15:Self-consciousness of the manner is the expensive substitute for simplicity. ~ George Eliot,
16:Self-consciousness is not knowledge but a story one tells about oneself. ~ Simone de Beauvoir,
17:It's our very capacity for self-consciousness that makes us self-destructive! ~ Alison Bechdel,
18:Self-consciousness can destroy a performance. Getting rid of that is always good. ~ Joe Dempsie,
19:Self-consciousness is the curse of the city and all that sophistication implies. ~ Annie Dillard,
20:My own self-consciousness cries out to me coldly: how does one love zero? ~ Villiers de L Isle Adam,
21:The only self-consciousness in the film [Dream of Life] is anyone's natural shyness. ~ Steven Sebring,
22:Do things for others and you'll find your self-consciousness evaporating like morning dew. ~ Dale Carnegie,
23:In prayer we shift the center of living from self-consciousness to self-surrender ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel,
24:She is confident and nonchalant in equal proportion to my paralyzing self-consciousness. ~ Rachel Friedman,
25:Philosophy of science is the neurotic self-consciousness of the modern body of knowledge. ~ Peter Sj stedt H,
26:When self-consciousness stops, there is nothing -nothing left to stop, start, begin or end. ~ Frederick Lenz,
27:My own self-consciousness cries out to me coldly: how does one love zero? ~ Auguste de Villiers de l Isle Adam,
28:They could talk about shallow things without judgment and deep things without self-consciousness. ~ Maile Meloy,
29:I do have, at different times, a certain kind of self-consciousness in the world, an insecurity. ~ Charlie Kaufman,
30:In connection with death, or birth, or love, modesty is only a rather puerile self-consciousness. ~ Margaret Deland,
31:The best thing about bugs is their lack of self consciousness, also the ability to fly doesn't hurt. ~ Dov Davidoff,
32:We have not the remotest realistic inkling of a consciousness which is not self-consciousness. ~ Wilhelm von Humboldt,
33:Consciousness of the bond between the male opponents is the beginning of masculine self-consciousness. ~ Erich Neumann,
34:In the end, it is all we are, these limpid tide pools of self-consciousness between crashing waves of pain. ~ Dan Simmons,
35:To a true collector, the acquisition of an old book is its rebirth,” Oscar quoted, absent self-consciousness. ~ Sheridan Hay,
36:was an antidote to the self-consciousness that consumed me as an eccentric teenager in search of an identity. ~ Michael J Fox,
37:Great periods of poetry begin with an inordinate self-consciousness, and only gradually attain to the natural. ~ Mark Van Doren,
38:Nationalism is not the awakening of nations to self-consciousness: it invents nations where they do not exist. ~ Ernest Gellner,
39:Nationalism is not the awakening of nations to self-consciousness; it invents nations where they do not exist. ~ Ernest Gellner,
40:And now he smiled at me. All teeth. The way only people who hadn’t learned self-consciousness
knew how to smile. ~ Alexis Hall,
41:If there is any characteristic that is distinctly human, it is the capability for reflective self-consciousness. ~ Albert Bandura,
42:In Socrates' thought the two marks of individual self-consciousness appear; it is practical and it is social. ~ James Mark Baldwin,
43:I really think that if there's any one enemy to human creativity, especially creative writing, it's self-consciousness. ~ Andre Dubus,
44:Memory is only a process of consciousness, a utility. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Memory, Self-Consciousness and the Ignorance,
45:The voice of the Constitution is the inescapably solemn self-consciousness of the people giving the law unto themselves. ~ E L Doctorow,
46:Partly I was honing my self-consciousness into a torture device, sharp and efficient enough to last me the rest of my life. ~ Lucy Grealy,
47:Technically developed self-consciousness isolates the self to an individual who reduces others to the status of things. ~ L E Modesitt Jr,
48:There's good self-consciousness, and then there's toxic, paralyzing, raped-by-psychic-Bedouins self-consciousness. ~ David Foster Wallace,
49:Consciousness is always Self-consciousness. If you are conscious of anything you are essentially conscious of yourself ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,
50:A writer's self-consciousness, for which he is much scorned, is really a mode of interestedness, that inevitably turns outward. ~ John Updike,
51:I was inclined to think him Jewish,” she wrote; she “considered his animus to be prompted only by his racial self-consciousness. ~ Erik Larson,
52:The strength of Shevek's personality, unchecked by any self-consciousness or consideration of self-defense, was formidable. ~ Ursula K Le Guin,
53:Self-consciousness is the enemy of all art, be it acting, writing, painting, or living itself, which is the greatest art of all. ~ Ray Bradbury,
54:We are not the only avatars of humanity. Once our computing machines achieved self-consciousness, they became part of this design. ~ Dan Simmons,
55:Alcohol is one of the quickest vehicles with which we escape shyness, our problems, and self-consciousness, for a few hours. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana,
56:Man can become like God and acquire control over the whole universe if he multiplies infinitely his centre of self-consciousness. ~ Swami Vivekananda,
57:he laughed and wept as a child does (and indeed as people in earlier centuries seem to have done) quite without self-consciousness.’25 ~ Tim Pat Coogan,
58:The main thing I don't like about myself is an absurd level of self-consciousness that makes any sort of social encounter an ordeal for me. ~ Jarvis Cocker,
59:Constant reading will pull you into a place - a mind-set, if you like the phrase - where you can write eagerly and without self-consciousness. ~ Stephen King,
60:Apply horse-sense to ridding yourself of self-consciousness and fear: face an audience as frequently as you can, and you will soon stop shying. ~ Dale Carnegie,
61:Fichte thinks that the mutual recognition of one another as free beings belongs among the transcendental conditions of self-consciousness itself. ~ Allen W Wood,
62:I, on the other hand, always hovered in the space between self-consciousness and sterile detachment; my gracefulness was akin to that of an ostrich ~ Penny Reid,
63:Yes, there is joy, fulfillment and companionship but the loneliness of the soul in its appalling self-consciousness is horrible and overpowering. ~ Sylvia Plath,
64:Actors cannot choose the manner in which they are born. Consequently, it is the one gesture in their lives completely devoid of self-consciousness. ~ Helen Hayes,
65:without self-consciousness a creature may know; but only by the aid of self-consciousness is it possible for him to know that he knows. ~ William Walker Atkinson,
66:For me, working out is nothing to do with looks. It's to let it all out - the stress, the self-consciousness - you think less; it makes you more centred. ~ Eva Green,
67:When you forget about your self consciousness for a moment, you forget about your true self, your real you and your true purpose for a moment ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah,
68:Today self-consciousness no longer means anything but reflection on the ego as embarrassment, as realization of impotence: knowing that one is nothing. ~ Theodor Adorno,
69:Thus in Christianity the alienation had become total, and it was this total alienation that was the biggest obstacle to the progress of self-consciousness. ~ Bruno Bauer,
70:Inspiration may be a form of superconsciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness - I wouldn't know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness. ~ Aaron Copland,
71:In other words, the final terror of self-consciousness is the knowledge of one’s own death, which is the peculiar sentence on man alone in the animal kingdom ~ Ernest Becker,
72:We are created for precisely this sort of suffering. In the end, it is all we are, these limpid tide pools of self-consciousness between crashing waves of pain. ~ Dan Simmons,
73:Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is indeed man’s self-consciousness and self-awareness as long as he has not found his feet in the universe. ~ Karl Marx,
74:The Great Mother impels—pushes (with certainty of mortality) and pulls (with possibility of redemption)—development of consciousness and of self-consciousness. ~ Jordan Peterson,
75:Art reaches its greatest peak when devoid of self-consciousness. Freedom discovers man the moment he loses concern over what impression he is making or about to make. ~ Bruce Lee,
76:The Great Mother impels—pushes (with certainty of mortality) and pulls (with possibility of redemption)—development of consciousness and of self-consciousness. ~ Jordan B Peterson,
77:Children are wise in a funny kind of way. They haven't developed so many vested interests of self. There is a wisdom, a lack of self-consciousness, that is innocence. ~ Frederick Lenz,
78:Self-consciousness, that's what it is. Always my abiding vice. I keep seeing myself. Me watching myself watching others watch me. How do you lose that? What's the trick? ~ Stephen Fry,
79:Existence is one with self-consciousness; existence with self-consciousness is existence simply. If I do not know that I exist, it is all one whether I exist or not. ~ Ludwig Feuerbach,
80:All great work artistic, poetic, intellectual or spiritual is produced at those moments when creators forget themselves altogether and are free from self-consciousness. ~ Walpola Rahula,
81:Works of art produced in the contemporary world are a further expression of that. But I don't think there is an active, ongoing nihilist self-consciousness in the artist. ~ Leonard Baskin,
82:As industrialization provided social uses for the operations of the photographer, so the reaction against these uses reinforced the self-consciousness of photography-as-art. ~ Susan Sontag,
83:Inspiration may be a form of superconsciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness—I wouldn’t know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness. AARON COPLAND All ~ Julia Cameron,
84:I've come to think that flourishing consists of putting yourself in situations in which you lose self-consciousness and become fused with other people, experiences, or tasks. ~ David Brooks,
85:Self-consciousness is a stoppage because it is like interrupting a song after every note so as to listen to the echo, and then feeling irritated because of the loss of rhythm. ~ Alan W Watts,
86:I think that we are supernatural. We are unique. We're the only animals in the universe that we know of that actually have self-consciousness, a sense of time and our own mortality. ~ Anne Rice,
87:There is not enough self-consciousness about what a family can be, about what it can inherit from forbearers, and what new traditions it can start as a contributor to the community. ~ Ralph Nader,
88:When you forget yourself and your fear, when you get beyond self-consciousness because your mind is thinking about what you are trying to communicate, you become a better communicator ~ Peggy Noonan,
89:The real truth of things lies not in their process, but behind it, in whatever determines, effects or governs the process. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Memory, Self-Consciousness and the Ignorance,
90:I'm going to write what I feel like writing, which is a great place to be. But it can be hard to get there. It's so easy to get stricken with one kind of self-consciousness or another. ~ Matthew Specktor,
91:What would it be like to communicate from a part of your own self that is absolutely free from self-consciousness, that is fearless, uncorrupted, and passionately interested in the truth?. ~ Andrew Cohen,
92:It would be foolish to despise tradition. But with our growing self-consciousness and increasing intelligence we must begin to control tradition and assume a critical attitude toward it, ~ Albert Einstein,
93:Suddenly Guy appeared in the doorway. Emma was surprised to see he had his jacket on, a black leather biker-style one he wore with the self-consciousness of a girl in her first pre-teen bra. ~ Tammy Cohen,
94:You have to overcome enormous self-consciousness, but nudity is about the strongest thing you can do in an acting performance. It's the most unsettling or the most comic or the most sexual. ~ John Lithgow,
95:The fact that I'd never really seen myself on screen allowed for a blissful ignorance. It didn't feel like a movie. I didn't have that self-consciousness. It was a game that I was playing. ~ Ellar Coltrane,
96:People at the top are self-conscious about what they say (and rightfully so) because they have position and privilege to protect — and self-consciousness is the enemy of “interestingness. ~ Malcolm Gladwell,
97:With Shakespeare and poetry, a new world was born. New dreams, new desires, a self consciousness was born. I desired to know to know myself in terms of the new standards set by these books. ~ Peter Abrahams,
98:One reasonable reaction to evolutionary psychology is a self-consciousness so acute, and a cynicism so deep, that ironic detachment from the whole human enterprise may provide the only relief. ~ Robert Wright,
99:The task of science, therefore, is not to attack the objects of faith, but to establish the limits beyond which knowledge cannot go and found a unified self-consciousness within these limits. ~ Rudolf Virchow,
100:This is the value for me of writing books that children read. Children aren't interested in your appalling self-consciousness. They want to know what happens next. They force you to tell a story. ~ Philip Pullman,
101:My fingers curl on his cheek, and all self-consciousness is gone, forgotten. “I’m not afraid of whatever you’re talking about. I think you keep warning me away because you’re the one who’s afraid. ~ Lisa Renee Jones,
102:The body is communicating through its universal language: pain. Your psyche is communicating through its universal language: fear. Self-consciousness, jealousy, insecurity, anxiety—they are all fear. ~ Michael Singer,
103:If she were seventeen at the time of her father's disappearance she must be seven-and-twenty now--a sweet age, when youth has lost its self-consciousness and become a little sobered by experience. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle,
104:The enemy, self-consciousness, is creeping up on them and Gibbsy or Biggsy is the first to crack, declaring that the music is shit and everyone stops dancing immediately as if a spell has been broken. ~ David Nicholls,
105:When you are self-conscious you are in trouble. When you are self-conscious you are really showing symptoms that you don’t know who you are. Your very self-consciousness indicates that you have not come home yet. ~ Osho,
106:For Hellenistic thought, self-consciousness is no longer, as it was for Hellenic thought, a power to conquer the world; it is a citadel providing a safe retreat from a world both hostile and intractable. ~ R G Collingwood,
107:After the advent of laser surgery but before puberty, before self-consciousness, before secondary school, before money, time or gender got their teeth in. Before language was a trap, when it was a maze. Before ~ Max Porter,
108:Illness is a part of every human being's experience. It enhances our perceptions and reduces self-consciousness. It is the great confessional; things are said, truths are blurted out which health conceals. ~ Virginia Woolf,
109:When you are self-conscious you are in trouble. When you are self-conscious you are really showing symptoms that you don't know who you are. Your very self-consciousness indicates that you have not come home yet. ~ Rajneesh,
110:Result of self-consciousness: audience and actor are the same. I live my life as a spectacle for myself, for my own edification. I live my life but I don't live in it. The hoarding instinct in human relations. ~ Susan Sontag,
111:I'm just one gigantic ball of rancid fear and self-consciousness. I'm entirely fueled by fear, so the fact that I knew it could be a catastrophic disaster made me unable to sleep, and made me work quite hard. ~ Eddie Redmayne,
112:there is no greater force within creation than the free will of beings endowed with self-consciousness and spiritual intellect; and so the misuse of this free will can have altogether terrifying consequences. ~ Kallistos Ware,
113:There is so much truth in children and so little self-consciousness. It always strikes me that they are so capable of losing and finding themselves and also losing and finding those things they feel close to. ~ Carson McCullers,
114:I sometimes wonder if all other animals, all plants, maybe even stars and rivers and rocks, dwell in steady awareness of God, while humans alone, afflicted with self-consciousness, imagine ourselves apart. ~ Scott Russell Sanders,
115:self-consciousness was the product of a positive feedback loop between perception and reflection, the two eventually amplifying each other into a cycle that occurred so quickly neither could be separated from the other. ~ Exurb1a,
116:The Psalms are, in a sense, God’s way of holding space for us. They invite us to rejoice, wrestle, cry, complain, offer thanks, and shout obscenities before our Maker without self-consciousness and without fear. ~ Rachel Held Evans,
117:there was something very taking in her face which owed nothing to the excellence of her features: an expression of sweetness, a sparkle of irrepressible fun, an unusually open look, quite devoid of self-consciousness. ~ Georgette Heyer,
118:Great acting can be almost a psychotic mix of self-consciousness and unself-consciousness. And thats the terrible conflict. You have to be free to jump off into that volcano and you have to be pathologically self-conscious. ~ Alec Baldwin,
119:Regardless of what kind of film, the number one rule of comedy is to never take yourself too seriously and then the next rule is you can't have any self-consciousness, otherwise it kills the laugh, and that will never change. ~ Ari Graynor,
120:Perhaps that's why they had been so happy to learn a new tongue in the first place : the self consciousness of it, the effort of it, the grammar of it, pulled you up; a new language provided distance and kept the heart intact. ~ Kiran Desai,
121:[S]o much worth … a man has, so much and no more has his God. Consciousness of God is self-consciousness, knowledge of God is self-knowledge. By his God thou knowest the man, and by the man, his God; the two are identical. ~ Ludwig Feuerbach,
122:A play that takes as its burden the meaning of self-consciousness may hint that inner freedom can be attained only when the protagonist can separate his genius for expanding consciousness from his own passion for theatricality. ~ Harold Bloom,
123:Man is the microcosm of the macrocosm ; the God on earth is built on the pattern of the God in nature. But the universal consciousness of the real Ego transcends a million fold the self-consciousness of the personal for false ego. ~ Carl Jung,
124:An animal of only instinct, Johnny Ferret, has in his actions drama, but no theater; theater requires that you draw a circle around the action and observe it from outside the circle; in other words, self-consciousness is theater. ~ Mary Ruefle,
125:As a busker, one thing that does not work is self-consciousness. A busker needs to be working. A busker needs to shed all ego and get down to work. Play your songs, play them well, earn your money, and don't get in people's way. ~ Glen Hansard,
126:Be conscious first of thyself within, then think and act. All living thought is a world in preparation; all real act is a thought manifested. The material world exists because an idea began to play in divine self–consciousness. ~ Sri Aurobindo,
127:He started writing poetry again, but it didn't come as easily. It was hard now to get past the self-consciousness - the silliness, really - of being such a well-established adult applying himself, seriously, to such a youthful joy. ~ B J Novak,
128:For only after, can one nail down, examine, explain. To try to know beforehand is to freeze and kill. Self-consciousness is the enemy of all art, be it acting, writing, painting, or living itself, which is the greatest art of all. ~ Ray Bradbury,
129:When life is thriving in us, we crave to get beyond it: experience that takes us out of ourselves, poetry that articulates a shape and space for the inexpressible, prayer that obliterates self-consciousness for the sake of God. ~ Christian Wiman,
130:... he was totally in thrall to the face of the girl in front of him. She stunned him. She paralysed him. Just being in the presence of that face made him pause, his tongue tied with self-consciousness. But she made it easy for him ~ Tony Parsons,
131:He is: frog: unworried by the self-consciousness with which the human animal is stuck; it is our blessing and our curse; not only do we know, we know that we know. And we are not often willing to face how little we know. ~ Madeleine L Engle,
132:If you think about Audrey Hepburn, I think she became more beautiful when she stopped being an actress and started working with humanitarian campaigns. The more engaged you can become the more you can shed your self-consciousness. ~ Cate Blanchett,
133:I think those moments in Patti's [Smith] bedroom really helped the film [Dream of Life] out, and those moments existed because of the trust between us. There isn't any real self-consciousness in the film because we all like each other. ~ Steven Sebring,
134:He didn’t run from something or to something, not for anyone or in spite of anyone; he ran because it was what his body wished to do. The restiveness, the self-consciousness, and the need to oppose disappeared. All he felt was peace. ~ Laura Hillenbrand,
135:It is ironic that the one thing that all religions recognize as separating us from our creator, our very self-consciousness, is also the one thing that divides us from our fellow creatures. It was a bitter birthday present from evolution. ~ Annie Dillard,
136:Without ever wanting to become reserved and shy, she had spent so long alone, with no one to love, that it was difficult for her to talk, even casually, to another person without self-consciousness and an awkward inability to find words. ~ Shirley Jackson,
137:I enjoy twitter accounts that are meticulously edited just as much as I enjoy twitter accounts that aren't edited at all, but it can feel kind of disappointing to me when I see that someone is editing their tweets out of self-consciousness. ~ Mira Gonzalez,
138:When not preoccupied with our selves, we actually have a chance to expand the concept of who we are. Loss of self-consciousness can lead to self-transcendence, to a feeling that the boundaries of our being have been pushed forward. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,
139:If the outer mind hungers for status, money, and applause, the inner mind hungers for harmony and connection—those moments when self-consciousness fades away and a person is lost in a challenge, a cause, the love of another or the love of God. ~ David Brooks,
140:It would be foolish to despise tradition. But with our growing self-consciousness and increasing intelligence we must begin to control tradition and assume a critical attitude toward it, if human relations are ever to change for the better. ~ Albert Einstein,
141:The beauty in the losing is a loss finally of self-consciousness. There's a gorgeous moment that can happen in all kinds of places. It can happen with people, it can happen with nature, and it can happen with my eyes shut anywhere I am. ~ Barbara Brown Taylor,
142:After death the soul possesses self-consciousness, otherwise, it would be the subject of spiritual death, which has already been disproved. With this self-consciousness necessarily remains personality and the consciousness of personal identity. ~ Immanuel Kant,
143:Proportion is all; and, in sports at school, I lost it by surrendering to the awful significance of my self-consciousness. Shyness has a strange element of narcissism, a belief that how we look, how we perform, is truly important to other people. ~ Andre Dubus,
144:Outsiders don’t understand the enfeebling self-consciousness of political debate on the middle-class liberal-left: they can’t imagine the thoughts strangled and tongues bitten to avoid giving the smallest offence to audiences overanxious to find it. ~ Nick Cohen,
145:It is, therefore, a very great thing to be little, which is to say: to be ourselves. And when we are truly ourselves we lose most of the futile self-consciousness that keeps us constantly comparing ourselves with others in order to see how big we are. ~ Stephen Cope,
146:My own emotional health issues were bullying me during the time I was drafting that poem. It was a pressure I couldn't pin down or diagnose. And like many, if not most, writers I had the self-consciousness to recognize it made great conditions for writing. ~ Gregory Pardlo,
147:I recall feeling an almost delicious terror when one day I found myself alone in the midst of tall June grasses that grew high as my head. But here the secret working of self consciousness is almost too entangled with the things of the past for me to explain it. ~ Pierre Loti,
148:Like most qualities, cuteness is delineated by what it isn't. Most people aren't cute at all, or if so they quickly outgrow their cuteness ... Elegance, grace, delicacy, beauty, and a lack of self-consciousness: a creature who knows he is cute soon isn't. ~ William S Burroughs,
149:With no help from myself, he also declared that self-consciousness was the product of a positive feedback loop between perception and reflection, the two eventually amplifying each other into a cycle that occurred so quickly neither could be separated from the other. ~ Exurb1a,
150:Who said you had to be human to have a soul? Everything that is self-conscious and capable of thought and love has a soul. The soul emanates from self-conscious. The soul is the expression of self-consciousness. The soul is generated by organized self-consciousness. ~ Anne Rice,
151:In the morning he rose to run again. He didn’t run from something or to something, not for anyone or in spite of anyone; he ran because it was what his body wished to do. The restiveness, the self-consciousness, and the need to oppose disappeared. Al he felt was peace. ~ Anonymous,
152:The motif of hostile twin brothers belongs to the symbolism of the Great Mother. It appears when the male attains to self-consciousness by dividing himself into two opposing elements, one destructive and the other creative. ~ Erich Neumann, The Origins and History of Consciousness,
153:It is solely by risking life that freedom is obtained; . . . the individual who has not staked his or her life may, no doubt, be recognized as a Person; but he or she has not attained the truth of this recognition as an independent self-consciousness. ~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel,
154:Patriotism can be good or bad. Knee-jerk patriotism can be very bad. I'm patriotic almost to the point of self-consciousness, but I love my country the way I love a friend or a child who I would correct if she was going the wrong way. Who I expect the very best from. ~ Emmylou Harris,
155:In the end, it is all we are, these limpid tide pools of self-consciousness between crashing waves of pain. We are destined and designed to bear our pain with us, hugging it tight to our bellies like the young Spartan thief hiding a wolf cub so it can eat away our insides. ~ Dan Simmons,
156:The powers of nature are so great, and our power is so inept. So,in order to cope with the incredible anxiety that human self-consciousness produced, I think we created God in our own image, and then portrayed this God as having supernatural power that we didn't have. ~ John Shelby Spong,
157:However, when we shift our awareness or "frequency" from self-consciousness - where fear, impossibility or feelings of separation reside - to cosmic consciousness, which is in total harmony with the universe and where none of those feelings exist, then anything is possible. ~ Rhonda Byrne,
158:I hugged him without any kind of fear or self-consciousness, fiercely, with a rush of emotion that almost brought tears to my eyes.
"I could kiss you!" Chubs cried.
"Please don't!" I gasp out, feeling his arms tighten around my ribs to the point of cracking them. ~ Alexandra Bracken,
159:In the morning he rose to run again. He didn’t run from something or to something, not for anyone or in spite of anyone; he ran because it was what his body wished to do. The restiveness, the self-consciousness, and the need to oppose disappeared. All he felt was peace. ~ Laura Hillenbrand,
160:You experience them experiencing pure magic, unadulterated by cynicism or irony or self-consciousness. And as the ride makes its full circle, so do you, until Peter Pan has done it again, and you are once more a child, taking it all in, amazed, overwhelmed, enchanted. ~ Neil Patrick Harris,
161:We do not step out of the world when we pray; we merely see the world in a different setting. The self is not the hub but the spoke of the revolving wheel. It is precisely the function of prayer to shift the center of living from self-consciousness to self-surrender. ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel,
162:He dropped his arms on the bed and peered over at Jenna.
She lay on her side facing him, hand tucked under her chin, not looking the least bit settled or relaxed.
"Whatchu need?"
"You." She spoke the word without and hesitation, any doubt, any seeming self-consciousness. ~ Laura Kaye,
163:Chris Hemsworth is like Christopher Reeve in that he can do two things: he can wear a big red cape without a shred of self-consciousness. But he's also funny as hell, and he's so sweet. So with all the fish-out-of-water stuff, he's so funny. So he does almost two jobs in a way. ~ Tom Hiddleston,
164:The weirdest time is when I'm having to explain myself all day to journalists, and then I don't perform, so there's no release, just a lot of self-consciousness. Then what do you do with that at the end of the day? How do you release your brain from talking about yourself all day? ~ Andrew Bird,
165:Benjamin called it “estro-lock,” the way the two women could talk for hours and lose track of time. They ended up in conversation across any table, screening out noise from kids and men. They could talk about shallow things without judgment and deep things without self-consciousness. ~ Maile Meloy,
166:Most people stiffen with self-consciousness when they pose for a photograph. Lighting and fine camera equipment are useless if the photographer cannot make them drop the mask, at least for a moment, so he can capture on his film their real, undistorted personality and character. ~ Philippe Halsman,
167:Our thesis is that symbols and myths are an expression of man's unique self-consciousness, his capacity to transcend the immediate concrete situation and see his life in terms of 'the possible,' and that this capacity is one aspect of his experiencing himself as a being having a world. ~ Rollo May,
168:Like too much alcohol,self-consciousness makes us see ourselves double, and we make the double image for two selves - mental and material, controlling and controlled, reflective and spontaneous. Thus instead of suffering we suffer about suffering, and suffer about suffering about suffering. ~ Alan Watts,
169:Mr. Casaubon had never had a strong bodily frame, and his soul was sensitive without being enthusiastic: it was too languid to thrill out of self-consciousness into passionate delight; it went on fluttering in the swampy ground where it was hatched, thinking of its wings and never flying. ~ George Eliot,
170:Like too much alcohol,self-consciousness makes us see ourselves double, and we make the double image for two selves - mental and material, controlling and controlled, reflective and spontaneous. Thus instead of suffering we suffer about suffering, and suffer about suffering about suffering. ~ Alan W Watts,
171:A writer, or a beginning writer, is faced by the huge walls of self-consciousness. Most people think, "What if I say the wrong thing? What if I don't sound erudite and sophisticated? I'll be considered a fool." In time, with a lot of practice, you realize that's your foolishness is your gift. ~ Richard Bach,
172:Why is failure the first thing I think of when I find myself in this sort of situation? Why can't I just enjoy myself? But if you have to ask the question, then you know you're lost: self-consciousness is a man's worst enemy. Already I'm wondering whether she's as aware of my erection as I am. ~ Nick Hornby,
173:The canker of self-consciousness has been long in me, so like a lot of writers I not only do a thing, I see myself doing it too—it’s almost like not being alone. That morning our hero skipped in his skivvies down to the shore of the sea . . . it was dark . . . the fog . . . Storytelling! ~ Charles D Ambrosio,
174:Why is failure the first thing I think of when I find myself in this sort of situation? Why can't I just enjoy myself? But if you have to ask the question, then you know you're lost: self-consciousness is a man's worst enemy. Already I'm wondering whether she's as aware of my erection as I am... ~ Nick Hornby,
175:To the question, 'What is God?' and 'What is man?' the answer is that the soul, conscious of its limited existence, is 'man', and the soul reflected by the vision of the unlimited, is 'God'. In plain words man's self-consciousness is man, and man's consciousness of his highest ideal is God. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan,
176:Every day we bear a burden that we should not be bearing. We fear that we are not good enough or that we will fail. We experience insecurity, anxiety, and self-consciousness. We fear that people will turn on us, take advantage of us, or stop loving us. All of these things burden us tremendously. ~ Michael A Singer,
177:I suggest that just as self-consciousness is the goal for all the subhuman forms of life, and as group consciousness, or the consciousness of the Heavenly Man, is the goal for the human being, so for him, also, there may be a goal, and for him the achievement may be the development of God consciousness. ~ Alice Bailey,
178:An honest self-portrait is extremely rare because a man who has reached the degree of self-consciousness presupposed by the desire to paint his own portrait has almost always also developed an ego-consciousness which paints himself painting himself, and introduces artificial highlights and dramatic shadows. ~ W H Auden,
179:The Jungian analyst Marie-Louise von Franz once observed that a person cutting vegetables while preparing to cook food is full of daydreams and fantasies that nurture the life of the soul. Contemplation can be an absorption in work that is free of self-consciousness and yet rich with imagination. Serious ~ Thomas Moore,
180:Process is merely a utility; it is a habitual adoption of certain effective relations which might in the infinite possibility of things have been arranged otherwise, for the production of effects which might equally have been quite different. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Memory, Self-Consciousness and the Ignorance,
181:If infants are not conscious of themselves, and if self-consciousness and reason are what it means to be human, then what are they? It turns out that if one doesn’t know what it means to be a person, one can kill without ever feeling bloodthirsty. In fact, you can feel as though you are saving the world. ~ Russell D Moore,
182:I really think that if there's any one enemy to human creativity, especially creative writing, its self-consciousness. And if you have one eye on the mirror to see how you're doing, you're not doing it as well as you can. Don't think about publishing, don't think about editors, don't think about marketplace. ~ Andre Dubus,
183:robust intelligence may be a liability—especially if by “intelligence” we mean our peculiar self-awareness, all our frantic loops of introspection and messy currents of self-consciousness. We want our self-driving car to be inhumanly focused on the road, not obsessing over an argument it had with the garage. ~ Kevin Kelly,
184:I know how you feel because I’ve been there too. I’ve hated and I’ve loved. I’ve seen my demons root and crawl and my angels branch and soar. I've died within myself and lived a thousand different lives. I too fight the same war and I too am drowning in the puddles of self-consciousness this world created. ~ Robert M Drake,
185:Now, learning how to make a movie is something you can figure out in about an afternoon. The physics of it, the marks, the lights, etc. What's hard to do is to suspend your own feelings of self consciousness. The natural actors can do that; they can become part of a characterization and learn how to maintain it. ~ Tom Hanks,
186:If we compare a severely defective human infant with a nonhuman animal, a dog or a pig, for example, we will often find the nonhuman to have superior capacities, both actual and potential, for rationality, self-consciousness, communication and anything else that can plausibly be considered morally significant. ~ Peter Singer,
187:You can’t re-create the first time you promise to love someone or the first time you feel loved by another. You cannot relive the sensation of fear, admiration, self-consciousness, passion, and desire all mixed into one because it never happens twice. You chase it like the first high for the rest of your life. ~ Renee Carlino,
188:It's not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathing—they are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter and all the mad intensities that made and unmade me. ~ Stephen Fry,
189:I love you" Ty said, the quiet words devoid of any self-consciousness of his usual bravado. " And I've never been able to say that before with such conviction. I can't remember a time when you weren't the first thing I thought of, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I don't care what stands in our way. ~ Abigail Roux,
190:Is there another Life? Shall I awake and find all this a dream? There must be, we cannot be created for this sort of suffering.” Oh, Fanny, if only you knew! We are created for precisely this sort of suffering. In the end, it is all we are, these limpid tide pools of self-consciousness between crashing waves of pain. ~ Dan Simmons,
191:You are preparing yourself for a scene, and the most important thing is to remain emotionally available and remain in the moment with your scene partner. You don't want to let your own self-consciousness block the flow of creativity that's coming out so that you can act and react, and play what the scene is all about. ~ Gale Harold,
192:Alcohol temporarily lifts the terrible burden of self-consciousness from people. Drunk people know about the future, but they don’t care about it. That’s exciting. That’s exhilarating. Drunk people can party like there’s no tomorrow. But, because there is a tomorrow—most of the time—drunk people also get in trouble. ~ Jordan Peterson,
193:A real woman understands that man was created to be the initiator, and she operates on that premise. This is primarily a matter of attitude. I am convinced that the woman who understands and accepts with gladness the difference between masculine and feminine will be, without pretense or self-consciousness, womanly. ~ Elisabeth Elliot,
194:It’s not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame, and self-loathing—they are not all bad. Those devils have also been my angels. Without them, I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter, and all the mad intensities that made and unmade ~ Jacob Nordby,
195:To say that historical conditions made personal life possible, and with it the self-consciousness that allowed psychoanalysis to emerge, is to tell half the story: one also has to consider that the erotic impulse, ever pressing for satisfaction, had something to do with making the history that encouraged its expression. ~ Ellen Willis,
196:Alcohol temporarily lifts the terrible burden of self-consciousness from people. Drunk people know about the future, but they don’t care about it. That’s exciting. That’s exhilarating. Drunk people can party like there’s no tomorrow. But, because there is a tomorrow—most of the time—drunk people also get in trouble. ~ Jordan B Peterson,
197:It’s not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame, and self-loathing - they are not all bad. Those devils have also been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter, and all the mad intensities that made and unmade me. ~ Stephen Fry,
198:I love you,” Ty said, the quiet words devoid of any self-consciousness or his usual bravado. “And I’ve never been able to say that before with such conviction. I can’t remember a time that you weren’t the first thing I thought of, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I don’t care what stands in our way.” Zane’s ~ Abigail Roux,
199:We are created precisely for this type of suffering. In the end, it is all we are, these limpid tide pools of self-consciousness between crashing waves of pain. We are destined and designed to bear our pain with us, hugging it tight to our bellies like the young Spartan thief hiding a wolf cub so it can eat away our insides. ~ Dan Simmons,
200:I'm almost 50, so I obviously don't have the same body that I had when I was 20. But I also don't have the same mindset either, when I was wracked with self-consciousness and insecurity. Now I really appreciate my maturity as a woman, my depth of spirit and soul and my understanding of who I am and what's important to me. ~ Elle Macpherson,
201:Unhappily, things get clearer as we go along. I perceive that I have no body. What's less, I've been speaking of myself without delight or alternative as self-consciousness pure and sour; I declare now that even that isn't true. I'm not aware of myself at all, as far as I know. I don't think. . . I know what I'm talking about. ~ John Barth,
202:But if it were true that his life had somehow been molded by acts of power of which he was unaware—then it would follow that he had never acted of his own volition; never had a moment of true self-consciousness. Everything he had ever assumed about himself was a lie, an illusion. And if this were so, how was he to find himself now? ~ Amitav Ghosh,
203:I believe that if we would carefully apply the distinction between transparency and opacity to the different layers of the human self-model, looking at self-consciousness in a much more careful and fine-grained manner, then we might also arrive at a new answer to your original question: What a "first-person perspective" really is. ~ Thomas Metzinger,
204:It is surely true that few people like to consider themselves enemies of thought and culture. Bush, after all, called himself the “education president” with a straight face while simultaneously declaring, without a trace of self-consciousness or self-criticism, that he rarely read newspapers because that would expose him to “opinions. ~ Susan Jacoby,
205:None of this is important in itself, but I feel somewhere that it has a lot to do with why I have always felt separate, why I have always felt unable to join in, to let go, to become part of the tribe, why I have always sniped or joked from the sidelines, why I have never, ever, lost my overwhelmingly self-conscious self-consciousness. ~ Stephen Fry,
206:When one crosses over from an activity, or the verb, of writing or doing, and becomes a noun, like "a writer" I think that is an act of supreme self-consciousness that I've never, in effect, made. I write, but I don't like to think of myself as a writer. I think it's somewhat self-aggrandizing and pretentious. Now, I am a teacher. ~ Joyce Carol Oates,
207:I've never quite felt totally comfortable up on stage. I've gotten more comfortable, but drinking wine is a crutch that gives me a little courage. It helps me lose a little bit of the self-consciousness and the awareness of how awkward it is standing on a stage with lights and a bunch of people looking at you while you sing love songs. ~ Matt Berninger,
208:There's a small percentage of people who can act. There's a small percentage who get to do this for a living. There's a swath of the population that are able to keep a story in their head and fight all the battles against self-consciousness and the surreal unnaturalness of acting in a movie. The technical aspects you can learn fairly quickly. ~ Tom Hanks,
209:In a world full of danger, to be a potentially seeable object is to be constantly exposed to danger. Self-consciousness, then, may be the apprehensive awareness of oneself as potentially exposed to danger by the simple fact of being visible to others. The obvious defence against such a danger is to make oneself invisible in one way or another. ~ R D Laing,
210:Therefore, criticism has to direct itself against itself, and against the mysterious Substance in which it has up to now hid itself. In this way criticism must resolve things such that the development of this Substance drives itself forward to the Universality and Certainty of the Idea of its actual existence, the Eternal Self-consciousness. ~ Bruno Bauer,
211:I keep threatening to keep a formal journal, but whenever I start one it instantly becomes an exercise in self-consciousness. Instead of a journal I manage to have dozens of notebooks with bits and pieces of stories, poems, and notes. Almost every thing I do has its beginning in a notebook of some sort, usually written on a bus or train. ~ Walter Dean Myers,
212:Since the moment of self-consciousness comes to a permanent end - and a new journey begins- is such a decisive stroke or milestone in the contemplative life, I can only speculate why so little has been said of this breakthrough; in fact , I may never get over the silence on the part of writers who say nothing about this second movement. ~ Bernadette Roberts,
213:[I] put the question directly to myself: "Suppose that all your objects in life were realized; that all the changes in institutions and opinions which you are looking forward to, could be completely effected at this very instant: would this be a great joy and happiness to you?" And an irrepressible self-consciousness distinctly answered, "No! ~ John Stuart Mill,
214:One of the things I love so much about Valerie [Belin] is that she inhabits her body so completely. She has no self-consciousness about having stretch marks or having given birth. It's just so amazing that she has nothing to hide. Whereas all these other women see every little - supposed - imperfection - anything irregular is seen as an imperfection. ~ Nan Goldin,
215:You looked strange climbing in the tree like that."
Tiger Lily pulled her braids between her fingers, her sudden self-consciousness feeling foreign and strange to her.
"I didn't do it to look nice," she said.
"But you do care."
Tiger Lily studied the tree and decided if she did care, she would now choose not to. "I don't," she said. ~ Jodi Lynn Anderson,
216:If someone as all-powerful as that loves me like this, delights in me, has gone to infinite lengths to save me, says he will never let me go, and is going to glorify me and make me perfect and take everything bad out of my life—if all of that is true—why am I worried about anything?” At a minimum this means joy, and a lack of fear and self-consciousness. ~ Timothy J Keller,
217:One of the thousand objections to the sin of pride lies precisely in this, that self-consciousness of necessity destroys sel-revelation. A man who thinks a great deal about himself will try to be many-sided, attempt a theatrical excellence at all points, will try to be an encyclopedia of culture, and his own real personality will be lost in that false universalism. ~ G K Chesterton,
218:There's probably not any kind of music that means more to me than gospel and soul. I heard somebody say that soul music is being proud of where you're from and what you've accomplished, and letting that show. Losing some self-consciousness and ego to join something larger. I like that idea a lot, just letting it all hang out, and on this album we did our best at that. ~ Jeff Tweedy,
219:Man has "a mind that soars out to speculate about atoms and infinity, who can place himself imaginatively at a point in space and contemplate bemusedly his own planet. This immense expansion, this dexterity, this ethereality, this self-consciousness gives to man literally the status of a small god in nature... Yet, at the same time... man is a worm and food for worms ~ Ernest Becker,
220:As I leave, I feel the value of shared ritual, community, common unity, and a forum in which to express energy and sensations that don’t have any safe context in secular society. We are paying a price for that. Where do we see this sense of abandon? Where do we participate in mass rituals of unity and transcendence? Where is it safe to put aside ego and self-consciousness? ~ Anonymous,
221:So I should be aware of the dangers of self-consciousness, but at the same time, I’ll be plowing through the fog of all these echoes, plowing through mixed metaphors, noise, and will try to show the core, which is still there, as a core, and is valid, despite the fog. The core is the core is the core. There is always the core, that can’t be articulated. Only caricatured. ~ Dave Eggers,
222:So I should be aware of the dangers of self-consciousness, but at the same time, I’ll be plowing through the fog of all these echoes, plowing through mixed metaphors, noise, and will try to show the core, which is still there, as a core, and is valid, despite the fog. The core is the core is the core. There is always the core, that can’t be articulated.
Only caricatured. ~ Dave Eggers,
223:Charles Francis Adams was singular for mental poise — absence of self-assertion or self-consciousness — the faculty of standing apart without seeming aware that he was alone — a balance of mind and temper that neither challenged nor avoided notice, nor admitted question of superiority or inferiority, of jealousy, of personal motives, from any source, even under great pressure. ~ Henry Adams,
224:the journey at least gave leisure for reflection and self-examination; it changed the child of Emancipation to the youth with dawning self-consciousness, self-realization, self-respect. In those sombre forests of his striving his own soul rose before him, and he saw himself,—darkly as through a veil; and yet he saw in himself some faint revelation of his power, of his mission. ~ W E B Du Bois,
225:Free passion is radiation without a radiator, a fluid, pervasive warmth that flows effortlessly. It is not destructive because it is a balanced state of being and highly intelligent. Self-consciousness inhibits this intelligent, balanced state of being. By opening, by dropping our self-conscious grasping, we see not only the surface of an object, but we see the whole way through. ~ Chogyam Trungpa,
226:If the moon, in the act of completing its eternal way around the earth, were gifted with self-consciousness, it would feel thoroughly convinced that it was traveling its way of its own accord. . . . So would a Being, endowed with higher insight and more perfect intelligence, watching man and his doings, smile about man’s illusion that he was acting according to his own free will. ~ Albert Einstein,
227:Well, think of what I’m doing to you right now. For me I’m the self, and you’re the object. For you, of course, it’s the exact opposite—you’re the self to you and I’m the object. And by exchanging self and object, we can project ourselves onto the other and gain self-consciousness. Volitionally.” “I still don’t get it, but it sure feels good.” “That’s the whole idea,” the girl said. ~ Haruki Murakami,
228:We are created for precisely this sort of suffering. In the end, it is all we are, these limpid tide pools of self-consciousness between crashing waves of pain. We are destined and designed to bear our pain with us, hugging it tight to our bellies like the young Spartan thief hiding a wolf cub so it can eat away our insides. What other creature in God’s wide domain would carry the memory ~ Dan Simmons,
229:In Christ Jesus freedom from fear empowers us to let go of the desire to appear good, so that we can move freely in the mystery of who we really are. Preoccupation with projecting the “nice guy” image, impressing newcomers with our experience, and relying heavily on the regard of others leads to self-consciousness, sticky pedestal behavior, and unfreedom in the iron grip of human respect. ~ Brennan Manning,
230:But to me, the argument is just semantics, an exercise in mental masturbation. True, Degas painted neither plein air nor spontaneously, but he had his own way of bringing his impressions into the heart of the viewer: his focus on the movement of racehorses and ballet dancers, his depiction of the ordinary milliner or washer woman or bather, caught in a complete lack of self-consciousness. ~ Barbara A Shapiro,
231:If the moon, in the act of completing its eternal way around the earth, were gifted
with self-consciousness, it would feel thoroughly convinced that it was traveling
its way of its own accord. . . . So would a Being, endowed with higher insight
and more perfect intelligence, watching man and his doings, smile about man’s
illusion that he was acting according to his own free will. ~ Albert Einstein,
232:Man—a little, eccentric species of animal, which—fortunately—has its day; all on earth a mere moment, an incident, an exception without consequences, something of no importance to the general character of the earth; the earth itself, like every star, a hiatus between two nothingnesses, an event without plan, reason, will, self-consciousness, the worst kind of necessity, stupid necessity… ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
233:She sat leaning back in her chair, looking ahead, knowing that he was as aware of her as she was of him. She found pleasure in the special self-consciousness it gave her. When she crossed her legs, when she leaned on her arm against the window sill, when she brushed her hair off her forehead - every movement of her body was underscored by a feeling the unadmitted words for which were: Is he seeing it? ~ Ayn Rand,
234:Then science came along and taught us that we are not the measure of all things, that there are wonders unimagined, that the Universe is not obliged to conform to what we consider comfortable or plausible. We have learned something about the idiosyncratic nature of our common sense. Science has carried human self-consciousness to a higher level. This is surely a rite of passage, a step towards maturity. ~ Carl Sagan,
235:I felt, watching Jim Morrison, that I could do that. I can’t say why I thought this. I had nothing in my experience to make me think that would ever be possible, yet I harbored that conceit. I felt both kinship and contempt for him. I could feel his self-consciousness as well as his supreme confidence. He exuded a mixture of beauty and self-loathing, and mystic pain, like a West Coast Saint Sebastian. When ~ Patti Smith,
236:I think a lot of acting is about the removal of self-consciousness. The actor is going to be in front of a lot of people, and will naturally feel self-conscious. So a lot of the preparation for that is the removal of that idea. Like you embody or are connected to this character, therefore you can present this character in a way that eventually, when you come back to see it, you feel not exactly ashamed of. ~ Chiwetel Ejiofor,
237:All thought of something is at the same time self-consciousness [...] At the root of all our experiences and all our reflections, we find [...] a being which immediately recognises itself, [...] and which knows its own existence, not by observation and as a given fact, nor by inference from any idea of itself, but through direct contact with that existence. Self-consciousness is the very being of mind in action. ~ Maurice Merleau Ponty,
238:The press has let the country down. It's taken a very amoral stand, in that essential issues are often portrayed as simply one side says this and the other side says that. I think that Fox News and the Republican right have intimidated the press into an incredible self-consciousness about appearing objective and backed them into a corner of sorts where they have ceded some of their responsibility and righteous power. ~ Bruce Springsteen,
239:The priestly redactor who set down the Genesis tale, an initiate and a believer, attributed to the `fruit' the gift of self-consciousness, a remarkable observation because self-consciousness is one of the major traits that distinguish humankind from all other creatures. Is it not surprising that the composer of the story gave credit for this particular gift to our mushroom? It is unlikely that he was alone in doing so. ~ R Gordon Wasson,
240:If the moon, in the act of completing its eternal way around the earth, were gifted with self-consciousness, it would feel thoroughly convinced that it was traveling its way of its own accord on the strength of a resolution taken once and for all. So would a Being, endowed with higher insight and more perfect intelligence, watching man and his doings, smile about man's illusion that he was acting according to his own free will. ~ Albert Einstein,
241:Unlike egotism, the drive to significance is a simple extension of the creative impulse of God that gave us being. It is not filtered through self-consciousness any more than is our lunge to catch a package falling from someone’s hand. It is outwardly directed to the good to be done. We were built to count, as water is made to run downhill. We are placed in a specific context to count in ways no one else does. That is our destiny. ~ Dallas Willard,
242:"The people" is that massive portion of a society that lives by its pathetic subjection to sheer immediacy or self-obviousness, and that therefore uncritically seizes upon the most simplistic and abstract ways of filling its vacuous self-consciousness. Not philosophy but dogma and rhetoric, not rationality but indoctrination and conditioning, provide the cultural junkfood by which the Many perfunctorily slake their thirst and hunger. ~ Kenny Smith,
243:The Greeks had a word for ultimate self-consciousness which I find illuminating: hubris: pride: pride in the sense of putting oneself in the center of the universe. The strange and terrible thing is that this kind of total self-consciousness invariably ends in self-annihilation. The great tragedians have always understood this, from Sophocles to Shakespeare. We witness it in history in such people as Tiberius, Eva Perón, Hider. I ~ Madeleine L Engle,
244:you're instantly in a bind once you arrive here on earth, of need, self-will, a body and a separate personality, even before teh crippling self-consciousness kicks in, even before the seventh grade ... you're fucked at cell division ... it's all downhill from there. After that, it's all survival, and trying to keep yourself either entertained or convinced that the things you're obsessed with are of any importance at all in the big scheme. ~ Anne Lamott,
245:She could not remember ever being truly happy in her adult life; her years with her mother had been built up devotedly around small guilts and small reproaches, constant weariness, and unending despair. Without ever wanting to become reserved and shy, she had spent so long alone, with no one to love, that it was difficult for her to talk, even casually, to another person without self-consciousness and an awkward inability to find words. ~ Shirley Jackson,
246:I wonder whether you have noticed that man is the only animal who draws his picture, his own picture. No other animal has ever done that. Not only does he draw pictures of himself, he stands before a mirror, looks at himself mirrored, reflected. Not only that, he stands before the mirror, looks at his reflection, and looks at himself looking at his reflection, and so on and so forth. Because of this, self-consciousness arises. Because of this, ego is born. ~ Osho,
247:Year by year, his life wasn't amounting to anything at all...And yet, another part of him had expanded: his self-consciousness, his self-pity -- oh, the tediousness of it...Shouldn't he return to a life where he might slice his own importance, to where he might relinquish this overrated control over his own destiny and perhaps be subtracted from its determination altogether? He might even experience that greatest luxury of not noticing himself at all. ~ Kiran Desai,
248:I’m not going to let my insecurities keep me from having a good time. I think that if you don’t loose your self-consciousness, you can’t really be present in a situation. For example, if you’re at The Louvre, but you’re thinking about how much you hate your jeans, you’re not really at The Louvre. So in your memory, when you look back, you’re always going to be like, “I was wearing those jeans I hated”. And you’re not going to remember anything else. ~ Christina Ricci,
249:In the perception of the senses consciousness of the object is distinguishable from consciousness of self; … in religion, consciousness of the object and self-consciousness coincide. … The object of the sense is … indifferent … ; … the object of religion is a selected object; … it essentially presupposes a critical judgement, a discrimination between the divine and the non-divine, between that which is worthy of adoration and that which is not worthy. ~ Ludwig Feuerbach,
250:Occasionally, though, an introduction to someone new is more intense and intimate from the get-go. Maybe we share the same sense of humor or we admire the other individual’s personality or passion. Or we immediately sense that we can just be ourselves around that person. Things feel right; we hit it off. There is an immediate sense of familiarity and comfort. Conversation flows easily, without embarrassing pauses or self-consciousness. In essence, we click. ~ Ori Brafman,
251:At some second transcendent moment in evolution, Edelman proposed, the development of “higher-order consciousness” was made possible in humans (and perhaps a few other species including apes and dolphins) by a higher level of reentrant signaling. Higher-order consciousness brings an unprecedented power of generalization and reflection, of recognizing past and future, so that finally self-consciousness, the awareness of being a self in the world, is achieved. ~ Oliver Sacks,
252:Against the monster, I’ve always wanted meaning. Not for its own sake, because in the usual course of things, who needs the self-consciousness of it? Let meaning be immanent, noted in passing, if at all. But that won’t do when the monster has its funnel driven into the back of your head and is sucking the light coming through your eyes straight out of you into the mouth of oblivion. So like a cripple I long for what others don’t notice they have: ordinary meaning. ~ Adam Haslett,
253:I sickened at the sight of Myself; how should I ever get rid of the demon? The same instant I saw the one escape: I must offer it back to its source—commit it to Him who had made it. I must live no more from it but from the source of it; seek to know nothing more of it than He gave me to know by His presence therein…. What flashes of self-consciousness might cross me, should be God’s gift, not of my seeking, and offered again to Him in every new self-sacrifice. ~ George MacDonald,
254:Daily absorption in the physical actualities of nature is life as I need it to be: it means I am connected to such large things - sky, sea, hill, the vagaries of weather, the undeniable needs of animals - that I can disappear as a subject of interest, I can exist without self-consciousness. The city is a challenge for me, however thrilling a few days prove, for its insatiable overstimulation and the rarity of quiet. The city makes people bigger than they need to be. ~ Tilda Swinton,
255:"I'm just telling you the structure of the story. It's something like… There was Paradise at the beginning of time. And then some cataclysm occurred and people fell into history, and history is: limitation, and mortality, and suffering, and self-consciousness. But there's a mode of being – or potentially the establishment of the state – that will transcend that. And that's what time is aiming at. That's the idea of the story." ~ Jordan Peterson,
256:"I'm just telling you the structure of the story. It's something like… There was Paradise at the beginning of time. And then some cataclysm occurred and people fell into history, and history is: limitation, and mortality, and suffering, and self-consciousness. But there's a mode of being – or potentially the establishment of the state – that will transcend that. And that's what time is aiming at. That's the idea of the story." ~ Jordan B Peterson,
257:I never consciously place symbolism in my writing. That would be a self-conscious exercise and self-consciousness is defeating to any creative act. Better to get the subconscious to do the work for you, and get out of the way. The best symbolism is always unsuspected and natural. During a lifetime, one saves up information which collects itself around centers in the mind; these automatically become symbols on a subliminal level and need only be summoned in the heat of writing. ~ Ray Bradbury,
258:If you're up there [on stage] thinking about what you're doing, you're just not there and it's not going to happen.So trying to learn how to overcome those - which is a normal thing to do. You're in front of a lot of people. People are going to get very self-conscious. So you have to learn to sort of overcome that tendency towards self-consciousness and just blow it wide open. And you jump in and join all those people that are out there enjoying what you're doing together. ~ Bruce Springsteen,
259:Without an old country link and a strangling church like the Italians, or the Irish, or the Poles, without generations of the American forebears to bind you to American life, or blind you by your loyalties to its deformities, you could read whatever you wanted and write however and whatever you pleased. Alienated? Just another way to say 'set free.' A Jew set free from Jews - yet only by steadily maintaining self-consciousness as a Jew. That was the thrilling paradoxical kicker. ~ Philip Roth,
260:When we are children, play comes to us naturally, but our capacity for play collapses as we age. Sex often remains the last arena of play we can permit ourselves, a bridge to our childhood. Long after the mind has been filled with injunctions to be serious, the body remains a free zone, unencumbered by reason and judgment. In lovemaking, we can recapture the utterly uninhibited movement of the child, who has not yet developed self-consciousness before the judging gaze of others. ~ Esther Perel,
261:It pained her to see his self-consciousness, the way it had suddenly revealed itself. In this light, his gray eyes were too clear. His posture had been confident. His words had had an edge. But his eyes were uncertain. Arin fidgeted again with his cuffs as if there was something wrong with them--with him. No, she would have said. You’re perfect, she wanted to say. She imagined it: how she would reach out to touch Arin’s bare wrist.
That could lead nowhere good. ~ Marie Rutkoski,
262:Miles sat hunched in a battered armchair in a small private parlor overlooking the street side of the great old mansion, feet up, eyes closed. It was a seldom-used room; there was a good chance of being left alone to brood in peace. He had never come to a more complete halt, a drained blankness numb even to pain. So much passion expended for nothing—a lifetime of nothing stretching endlessly into the future—because of a split second’s stupid, angry self-consciousness . .  ~ Lois McMaster Bujold,
263:The sum of productive forces, capital funds and social forms of intercourse, which every individual and generation finds in existence as something given, is the real basis of what the philosophers have conceived as "substance" and "essence of man," and what they have deified and attacked: a real basis which is not in the least disturbed, in its effect and influence on the development of men, by the fact that these philosophers revolt against it as "self-consciousness" and the "Unique. ~ Karl Marx,
264:Shimamoto and I thus grew apart, and I ended up not seeing her anymore. And that was probably (probably is the only word I can think of to use here; I don’t consider it my job to investigate the expanse of memory called the past and judge what is correct and what isn’t) a mistake. I should have stayed as close as I could to her. I needed her, and she needed me. But my self-consciousness was too strong, and I was too afraid of being hurt. I never saw her again. Until many years later, that is. ~ Haruki Murakami,
265:Just as Prometheus delivered stolen fire to man, so Eve, and the serpent, delivered man into self-consciousness, setting him up, were it not for his short lifespan, as rival to God. At the same time, man’s self-consciousness removed him from nature into a life of toil, doubt, fear, guilt, shame, blame, enmity, loneliness, and frailty—and the product of this separation, the fruit and flower of this exile, is, of course, culture. ‘God,’ said the writer Victor Hugo, ‘made only water, but man made wine. ~ Neel Burton,
266:Our Christian destiny is, in fact, a great one: but we cannot achieve greatness unless we lose all interest in being great. For our own idea of greatness is illusory, and if we pay too much attention to it we will be lured out of the peace and stability of the being God gave us, and seek to live in a myth we have created for ourselves. And when we are truly ourselves we lose most of the futile self-consciousness that keeps us constantly comparing ourselves with others in order to see how big we are. ~ Thomas Merton,
267:She takes hold of his hands. As they move together, Rolph feels his self-consciousness miraculously fade, as if he is growing up right there on the dance floor, becoming a boy who dances with girls like his sister. Charlie feels it, too. In fact, this particular memory is one she'll return to again and again, for the rest of her life, long after Rolph has shot himself in the head in their father's house at twenty eight: her brother as a boy, hair slicked flat, eyes sparking, shyly learning to dance. ~ Jennifer Egan,
268:There is always a point at which the terrorist ceases to manipulate the media gestalt. A point at which the violence may well escalate, but beyond which the terrorist has become symptomatic of the media gestalt itself. Terrorism as we ordinarily understand it is innately media-related. The Panther Moderns differ from other terrorists precisely in their degree of self-consciousness, in their awareness of the extent to which media divorce the act of terrorism from the original sociopolitical intent … ~ William Gibson,
269:I missed him.
I missed our conversations by the fire, when he had read aloud from the writings of Erasmus and Kepler and Copernicus, when I had set aside my self-consciousness and performed for him the works of occasional poetry I had learned. I missed our childish games of Truth or Forfeit, his hand tricks and jests. I missed working with him on our Wedding Night Sonata, but most of all I missed his smile, his mismatched eyes, and those long, elegant fingers of his that worked both music and magic. ~ S Jae Jones,
270:There is always a point at which the terrorist ceases to manipulate the media gestalt. A point at which the violence may well escalate, but beyond which the terrorist has become symptomatic of the media gestalt itself. Terrorism as we ordinarily understand it is inately media-related. The Panther Moderns differ from other terrorists precisely in their degree of self-consciousness, in their awareness of the extent to which media divorce the act of terrorism from the original sociopolitical intent. . . . ~ William Gibson,
271:My suggestion, then, is that we accord the fetus no higher moral status than we give to a nonhuman animal at a similar level of rationality, self-consciousness, awareness, capacity to feel and so on. Because no fetus is a person, no fetus has the same claim to life as a person. Until a fetus has some capacity for conscious experience, an abortion terminates an existence that is – considered as it is and not in terms of its potential – more like that of a plant than of a sentient animal like a dog or a cow. ~ Peter Singer,
272:Reason is the true creative power, for it produces itself as Infinite Self-consciousness, and its ongoing creation is...world history. As the only power that exists, Spirit can therefore be determined by nothing other than itself, that is, its essence is Freedom...Freedom is the infinite power of Spirit...Freedom, the only End of Spirit, is also the only End of History, and history is nothing other than Spirit's becoming *conscious* of its Freedom, or the becoming of Real, Free, Infinite Self-consciousness. ~ Bruno Bauer,
273:For David Shenk, the most important of the “windows onto meaning” afforded by Alzheimer’s is its slowing down of death. Shenk likens the disease to a prism that refracts death into a spectrum of its otherwise tightly conjoined parts—death of autonomy, death of memory, death of self-consciousness, death of personality, death of body—and he subscribes to the most common trope of Alzheimer’s: that its particular sadness and horror stem from the sufferer’s loss of his or her “self” long before the body dies. ~ Jonathan Franzen,
274:Q. Surely it is easier to be objective about other people than about oneself?
A. No, it is more difficult. If you become objective to yourself you can see other people objectively, but not before, because before that it will all be coloured by your own views, attitudes, tastes, by what you like and what you dislike. To be objective you must be free from it all. You can become objective to yourself in the state of self-consciousness: this is the first experience of coming into contact with the real object. ~ P D Ouspensky,
275:An inquiry which I once made into the psychology of the Indian sign language with a view to discovering a possible relation between it and Greek manual gesture as displayed in ancient graphic art, led to the conclusion that Indian rhythms arise rather in the centre of self-preservation than of self-consciousness. Which is only another way of saying that poetry is valued primarily by the aboriginal for the reaction it produces within himself rather than for any effect he is able to produce on others by means of it. ~ Carl Sandburg,
276:I wish I could go out farther from my musical history. I didn't realize how hard it was until I tried to do it. All the basic tracks on Romanian Names were done in my basement, alone, without any of the self-consciousness that comes with being in the studio. It was a completely different process. And those two things definitely made the record sound different. But you want this quantum leap from record to record, and maybe if I did make a quantum leap I'd make an unlistenable album. So maybe I'm lucky that I can't pull it off. ~ John Vanderslice,
277:In flow a person is challenged to do her best, and must constantly improve her skills. At the time, she doesn’t have the opportunity to reflect on what this means in terms of the self—if she did allow herself to become self-conscious, the experience could not have been very deep. But afterward, when the activity is over and self-consciousness has a chance to resume, the self that the person reflects upon is not the same self that existed before the flow experience: it is now enriched by new skills and fresh achievements. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,
278:When the Holy Spirit comes down on you in fullness, you can sense your Father’s arms beneath you. It is an assurance of who you are. The Spirit enables you to say to yourself: “If someone as all-powerful as that loves me like this, delights in me, has gone to infinite lengths to save me, says he will never let me go, and is going to glorify me and make me perfect and take everything bad out of my life—if all of that is true—why am I worried about anything?” At a minimum this means joy, and a lack of fear and self-consciousness. ~ Timothy J Keller,
279:The dialectic of antiquity tended towards leadership (the great individual and the masses--the free man and the slaves); so far the dialectic of Christendom tends towards representation (the majority sees itself in its representative and is set free by the consciousness that it is the majority which is represented, in a sort of self-consciousness); the dialectic of the present age tends towards equality, and its most logical--though mistaken--fulfilment is levelling, as the negative unity of the negative reciprocity of all individuals. ~ S ren Kierkegaard,
280:God, but life is loneliness, despite all the opiates, despite the shrill tinsel gaiety of "parties" with no purpose, despite the false grinning faces we all wear. And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter - they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long. Yes, there is joy, fulfillment and companionship - but the loneliness of the soul in its appalling self-consciousness is horrible and overpowering. ~ Sylvia Plath,
281:More than his exterior hit me. I felt warm and safe just being with him. He brought comfort after my terrible day. So often with other people I felt a need to be center of attention, to be funny and always have something clever to say. It was a habit I needed to shake. But with him I never felt like I had to be anything more than what I already was. I didn’t have to entertain him or think up jokes or even flirt. It was enough to just be together, to be so completely comfortable in each other’s presence—we lost all sense of self-consciousness. ~ Richelle Mead,
282:You cannot relive the sensation of fear, admiration, self-consciousness, passion, and desire all mixed into one because it never happens twice. You chase it like the first high for the rest of your life. It doesn’t mean you can’t love another or move on; it just means that the one spontaneous moment, the split second that you took the leap, when your heart was racing and your mind was muddled with What ifs?—that moment—will never happen the same way again. It will never feel as intense as the first time. At least, that’s the way I remember it. ~ Renee Carlino,
283:his soul was sensitive without being enthusiastic: it was too languid to thrill out of self-consciousness into passionate delight; it went on fluttering in the swampy ground where it was hatched, thinking of its wings and never flying. His experience was of that pitiable kind which shrinks from pity, and fears most of all that is should be known: it was that proud narrow sensitiveness which has not mass enough to spare for transformation into sympathy, and quivers threadlike in small currents of self-preoccupation or at best of an egoistic scrupulosity. ~ George Eliot,
284:Just when she was about to scream with frustration he flexed his hips and slid inside her. Her body welcomed him as he buried himself to the hilt. She let out a broken little sob, almost tearful over how good it felt to be filled by him, how hard and thick and hot he felt inside her.
He started to move, and within seconds she’d found his rhythm. Every clumsy sexual encounter she’d ever had, every second of self-consciousness over her body or her own needs, every doubt she’d ever experienced went out the window as she gave herself over to the moment. ~ Sarah Mayberry,
285:The mind cannot fall asleep as long as it watches itself. Only when the mind moves unwatched and becomes absorbed in images that tug it as it were to one side does self-consciousness dissolve and sleep with its healing, brilliantly detailed fictions pour in upon the jittery spirit. Falling asleep is a study in trust. Likewise, religion tries to put as ease with the world. Being human cannot be borne alone. We need other presences. We need soft night noises-a mother speaking downstairs. We need the little clicks and sighs of a sustaining otherness. We need the gods. ~ John Updike,
286:Hello, Lanier, how about a song? Will you and Topsy sing me a song?”
“What shall we sing?” agreed the little boy, with the odd chanting accent of
American children brought up in France.
“That song about ‘Mon Ami Pierrot.’”
Brother and sister stood side by side without self-consciousness and their voices soared sweet and shrill upon the evening air.

“Au clair de la lune
Mon Ami Pierrot
Prête-moi ta plume
Pour écrire un mot
Ma chandelle est morte
Je n’ai plus de feu
Ouvre-moi ta porte
Pour l’amour de Dieu. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald,
287:You looked strange climbing in the tree like that."
Tiger Lily pulled her braids between her fingers, her sudden self-consciousness feeling foreign and strange to her.
"I didn't do it to look nice," she said.
"But you do care."
Tiger Lily studied the tree and decided if she did care, she would now choose not to. "I don't," she said.
"All girls do," he added, pushing the point.
"You must not know many girls."
"I know a million," Peter said, dark and serious. There was a long awkward silence, but if Peter regretted his words, I couldn't tell. ~ Jodi Lynn Anderson,
288:We are all haunted by the lost perfection of the ego that contained everything, and we measure ourselves and our lovers against this standard. We search for a replica in external satisfactions, in food, comfort, sex, or success, but gradually learn, through the process of sublimation, that the best approximation of that lost feeling comes from creative acts that evoke states of being in which self-consciousness is temporarily relinquished. These are the states in which the artist, writer, scientist, or musician, like Freud’s da Vinci, dissolves into the act of creation. ~ Mark Epstein,
289:He has crossed the threshold of self-consciousness to a new mode of thought, and as a result has achieved some degree of conscious integration—integration of the self with the outer world of men and nature, integration of the separate elements of the self with each other. He is a person, an organism which has transcended individuality in personality. This attainment of personality was an essential element in man’s past and present evolutionary success: accordingly its fuller achievement must be an essential aim for his evolutionary future. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man,
290:God is, is the first seed of Yoga. It is Tat Sat of the Vedanta. I am, is the second seed. It is So'ham of the Upanishads. God is infinite self-existence, self-conscious force of existence, self-diffused or self-concentrated delight of existence; I too am that infinite self-existence, self-consciousness, self-force, self-delight; this is the double third seed. It is Sachchidananda of the worldwide transcendental conclusion of all human thinking. Self-knowledge is the foundation of the complete Yoga. Affirm in yourselves self-knowledge.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human [T9],
291:Most comics are not truly rebellious or creatively free. Most comics, paintings, music, etc., are derivative of other, more successful works. And it's quite often that those without much rebellious spirit are the ones to imitate it. Genuine radical expression is hard to come by, but it usually crops up when money is not a motivating factor. You can take all the liberties you want when someone else's dime is not at stake. The validation is not a threat to comics. A far greater threat to the creative freedom of artists working in any medium is self-consciousness and self-censorship. ~ Phoebe Gloeckner,
292:In the same interview, Koch described, without any self-consciousness, how he had recently promoted his son, Chase, to the presidency of Koch Fertilizer and how at “every step, he’s done it on his own.” The possibility that his son, like he and his brothers, Richard Mellon Scaife, Dick DeVos, and the Bechtel boys, to name just a few in his network, might have benefited from a job in the family’s business or a huge inheritance, rather than having been “condemned…to a lifetime of dependency and hopelessness,” because “somebody” had given “them something,” seemed not to have crossed his mind. ~ Jane Mayer,
293:I sip my coffee. I look at the mountain, which is still doing its tricks, as you look at a still-beautiful face belonging to a person who was once your lover in another country years ago: with fond nostalgia, and recognition, but no real feelings save a secret astonishment that you are now strangers. Thanks. For the memories. It is ironic that the one thing that all religions recognize as separating us from our creator--our very self-consciousness--is also the one thing that divides us from our fellow creatures. It was a bitter birthday present from evolution, cutting us off at both ends. ~ Annie Dillard,
294:But the more shrewdly and earnestly we study the histories of men, the less ready shall we be to make use of the word ‘artificial.’ Nothing in the world has ever been artificial. Many customs, many dresses, many works of art are branded with artificiality because the exhibit vanity and self-consciousness: as if vanity were not a deep and elemental thing, like love and hate and the fear of death. Vanity may be found in darkling deserts, in the hermit and in the wild beasts that crawl around him. It may be good or evil, but assuredly it is not artificial: vanity is a voice out of the abyss. ~ G K Chesterton,
295:I who write have I not been purchased by their money and made captive to their power? And is there any crucial test to tell you a man of breeding like the manner in which he will treat a thing that lies in his power? Well— I, who thus have opportunity of examination and judgment passiug the common rule, do affirm that in all which makes a man loyal, brave, patient, and of high honor, frank of speech, honest of thought, faithful in word to friend or foe, without self-consciousness in distinction, and without complaint or self-pity in adversity, I have never known the equal of your English gentlemen. ~ Ouida,
296:And then, leaning slowly towards him, she did something she realised she'd been wanting to do for such a long time. She kissed him.
For a second he hesitated, before letting himself fall with her, and, pulling her close, he wrapped his arms around her, pressing her to him. Breathing her in. His lips against hers. Tongue against tongue. Eyes closed. Hearts thudding. Deep, long, hungry kisses born out of the lack of any feelings of self-consciousness or embarrassment. Just two people wanting each other. Holding each other. Kissing the life out of each other.
It had been a long time coming. ~ Alexandra Potter,
297:Just consider a child who, absorbed in play, forgets himself—this is the moment to take a snapshot; when you wait until he notices that you are taking a picture, his face congeals and freezes, showing his unnatural self-consciousness rather than his natural graciousness. Why do most people have that stereotyped expression on their faces whenever they are photographed? This expression stems from their concern with the impression they are going to leave on the onlooker. It is "cheese" that makes them so ugly. Forgetting themselves, the photographer, and the future onlooker would make them beautiful. ~ Viktor E Frankl,
298:Philosophy, as long as a drop of blood shall pulse in its world-subduing and absolutely free heart, will never grow tired of answering its adversaries with the cry of Epicurus:

"Not the man who denies the gods worshiped by the multitude, but he who affirms of the gods what the multitude believes about them, is truly impious"

Philosophy makes no secret of it. The confession of Prometheus:

"In simple words, I hate the pack of gods"

is its own confession, its own aphorism against all heavenly and earthly gods who do not acknowledge human self-consciousness as the highest divinity. ~ Karl Marx,
299:Madonna has no equal at getting attention. She often seems to behave like someone who has been under severe restraint and can now say and do whatever she likes without fear of reprisal. She delights in being challenged, in telling more than she planned, in going further than she had intended. She will answer any question because she is genuinely interested in her own reply. A conversation or an interview then can become an opportunity for self-discovery, or just discovery. It's a hearty mix of self-consciousness and self-confidence. It's a type of courage, this free fall into the perplexing public now. ~ Carrie Fisher,
300:There is no time for hesitation. This sense of the imminence of death energizes the man accessing the Warrior energy to take decisive action. This means that he engages life. He never withdraws from it. He doesn’t “think too much,” because thinking too much can lead to doubt, and doubt to hesitation, and hesitation to inaction. Inaction can lead to losing the battle. The man who is a Warrior avoids self-consciousness, as we usually define it. His actions become second nature. They become unconscious reflex actions. But they are actions he has trained for through the exercise of enormous self-discipline. ~ Robert L Moore,
301:You can’t re-create the first time you promise to love someone or the first time you feel loved by another. You cannot relive the sensation of fear, admiration, self-consciousness, passion, and desire all mixed into one because it never happens twice. You chase it like the first high for the rest of your life. It doesn’t mean you can’t love another or move on; it just means that the one spontaneous moment, the split second that you took the leap, when your heart was racing and your mind was muddled with What ifs?—that moment—will never happen the same way again. It will never feel as intense as the first time. ~ Renee Carlino,
302:You can't re-create the first time you promise to love someone or the first time you feel loved by another. You cannot relive the sensation of fear, admiration, self-consciousness, passion, and desire all mixed into one because it never happens twice. You chase it like the first high for the rest of your life. It doesn't mean you can't love another or move on; it just means that the one spontaneous moment, the split second that you took the leap, when your heart was racing and your mind was muddled with What ifs?- that moment-will never happen the same way again. It will never feel as intense as the first time. ~ Renee Carlino,
303:Perhaps, if we lived properly, we would be able to tolerate the weight of our own self-consciousness. Perhaps, if we lived properly, we could withstand the knowledge of our own fragility and mortality, without the sense of aggrieved victimhood that produces, first, resentment, then envy, and then the desire for vengeance and destruction. Perhaps, if we lived properly, we wouldn't have to turn to totalitarian certainty to shield ourselves from the knowledge of our own insufficiency and ignorance. Perhaps we could come to avoid those pathways to Hell—and we have seen in the terrible twentieth century just how real Hell can be. ~ Jordan Peterson,
304:Perhaps, if we lived properly, we would be able to tolerate the weight of our own self-consciousness. Perhaps, if we lived properly, we could withstand the knowledge of our own fragility and mortality, without the sense of aggrieved victimhood that produces, first, resentment, then envy, and then the desire for vengeance and destruction. Perhaps, if we lived properly, we wouldn't have to turn to totalitarian certainty to shield ourselves from the knowledge of our own insufficiency and ignorance. Perhaps we could come to avoid those pathways to Hell—and we have seen in the terrible twentieth century just how real Hell can be. ~ Jordan B Peterson,
305:Only by forgetting this primitive world of metaphor can one live with any repose, security, and consistency: only by means of the petrification and coagulation of a mass of images which originally streamed from the primal faculty of human imagination like a fiery liquid, only in the invincible faith that this sun, this window, this table is a truth in itself, in short, only by forgetting that he himself is an artistically creating subject, does man live with any repose, security, and consistency. If but for an instant he could escape from the prison walls of this faith, his "self consciousness" would be immediately destroyed. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
306:I have always loved you, princess," Robin Goodfellow promised, his green eyes shining in the darkness. "I always will. And I'll take whatever you can give me."
I looked down, unable to meet his open stare, human fears and self-consciousness coming to the surface. "Even if all I can offer is friendship? Will that still be enough?"
"Well, not really." Puck dropped his hand, his voice turning light and carefree again, more like the Puck I knew. "Damn not being able to lie. Princess, if you suddenly decide ice-boy is a first-class jerk and that you can't stand him, I'll always be here. But for now, I'll settle for being the best friend. ~ Julie Kagawa,
307:What does it mean that man is a 'social animal? Only that humans need one another in order to define themselves and achieve self-consciousness, in a way that molluscs or earthworms do not. We cannot come to a proper sense of ourselves if there aren't others around to show us what we're like. 'A man can acquire anything in solitude except a character,' wrote Stendhal, suggesting that character has its genesis in the reactions of others to our words and actions. Our selves are fluid and require the contours provided by our neighbours. To feel whole, we need people in the vicinity who know us as well, sometimes better, than we know ourselves. ~ Alain de Botton,
308:the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. ~ W E B Du Bois,
309:What does it mean that man is a ‘social animal’? Only that humans need one another in order to define themselves and achieve self-consciousness, in a way that molluscs or earthworms do not. We cannot come to a proper sense of ourselves if there aren’t others around to show us what we’re like. ‘A man can acquire anything in solitude except a character,’ wrote Stendhal, suggesting that character has its genesis in the reactions of others to our words and actions. Our selves are fluid and require the contours provided by our neighbours. To feel whole, we need people in the vicinity who know us as well, sometimes better, than we know ourselves. 4. ~ Alain de Botton,
310:There is no way you can share your inner self because you are an object of contempt to yourself. When you are contemptible to yourself, you are no longer in you. To feel shame is to feel exposed in a diminished way. When you’re an object to yourself, you turn your eyes inward, watching and scrutinizing every minute detail of behavior. This internal critical observation is excruciating. It generates a tormenting self-consciousness that Kaufman describes as “creating a binding and paralyzing effect upon the self.” This paralyzing internal monitoring causes withdrawal, passivity and inaction. The severed parts of the self are projected in relationships. ~ John Bradshaw,
311:None of this is important in itself, but I feel somewhere that it has a lot to do with why I have always felt separate, why I have always felt unable to join in, to let go, to become part of the tribe, why I have always sniped or joked from the sidelines, why I have never, ever, lost my overwhelmingly self-conscious self-consciousness. It’s not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathing – they are not all bad. Those devils have also been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter and all the mad intensities that made and unmade me. ~ Stephen Fry,
312:Why is it precisely at this intermediate level in the hierarchy of successively superimposed unities (cell, organ, human body, state)—why, I ask, is it precisely at the level of my body that unitary self-consciousness comes into the picture, whereas the cell and the organ do not as yet possess it and the state possesses it no longer? Or, if this is not so, how is my Self constituted out of the individual selves of my brain-cells? Is there a higher Self similarly constituted out of the consciousness of myself and my fellow-men, equally and directly conscious of itself as a unity—the Self of the state or of the whole of humanity? ~ Erwin Schrödinger, My View of the World,
313:None of this is important in itself, but I feel somewhere that it has a lot to do with why I have always felt separate, why I have always felt unable to join in, to let go, to become part of the tribe, why I have always sniped or joked from the sidelines, why I have never, ever, lost my overwhelmingly self-conscious self-consciousness.

It's not all that bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathing - they are not all bad. Those devils have also been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter and all the mad intensities that made and unmade me. ~ Stephen Fry,
314:...this is love. I have my self-consciousness not in myself but in the other. I am satisfied and have peace with myself only in this other and I AM only because I have peace with myself; if I did not have it then I would be a contradiction that falls to pieces. This other, because it likewise exists outside itself, has its self-consciousness only in me; and both the other and I are only this consciousness of being-outside-ourselves and of our identity; we are only this intuition, feeling, and knowledge of our unity. This is love, and without knowing that love is both a distinguishing and the sublation of this distinction, one speaks emptily of it. ~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel,
315:WE HAVE SEEN HOW PEOPLE DESCRIBE the common characteristics of optimal experience: a sense that one’s skills are adequate to cope with the challenges at hand, in a goal-directed, rule-bound action system that provides clear clues as to how well one is performing. Concentration is so intense that there is no attention left over to think about anything irrelevant, or to worry about problems. Self-consciousness disappears, and the sense of time becomes distorted. An activity that produces such experiences is so gratifying that people are willing to do it for its own sake, with little concern for what they will get out of it, even when it is difficult, or dangerous. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,
316:After three-quarters of an hour of standing around, he became suddenly involved in a human contact. It was just the sort of thing that was likely to happen to him when he was in the mood of not wanting to see any one. So rigidly did he sometimes guard his exposed self-consciousness that frequently he defeated his own purposes; as an actor who underplays a part sets up a craning forward, a stimulated emotional attention in an audience, and seems to create in others an ability to bridge the gap he has left open. Similarly we are seldom sorry for those who need and crave our pity — we reserve this for those who, by other means, make us exercise the abstract function of pity. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald,
317:We are created for precisely this sort of suffering. In the end, it is all we are, these limpid tide pools of self-consciousness between crashing waves of pain. We are destined and designed to bear our pain with us, hugging it tight to our bellies like the young Spartan thief hiding a wolf cub so it can eat away our insides. What other creature in God's wide domain would carry the memory of you, Fanny, dust these nine hundred years, and allow it to eat away at him even as consumption does the same work with its effortless efficiency?

Words assail me. The thought of books makes me ache. Poetry echoes in my mind, and if I had the ability to banish it, I would do so at once. ~ Dan Simmons,
318:Animals lack a symbolic identity and the self consciousness that goes with it. They merely act and move reflexively as they are driven by their instincts. If they pause at all, it is only a physical pause; inside they are anonymous, and even their faces have no name. They live in a world without time, pulsating, as it were, in a state of dumb being … the knowledge of death is reflective and conceptual, and animals are spared it. They live and they disappear with the same thoughtlessness: a few minutes of fear, a few seconds of anguish, and it is over. But to live a whole lifetime with the fate of death haunting one’s dreams and even the most sun-filled days - that’s something else. ~ Ernest Becker,
319:Adolescence is best enjoyed without self-consciousness, but self-consciousness, unfortunately, is its leading symptom. Even when something important happens to you, even when your heart's getting crushed or exalted, even when you're absorbed in building the foundations of a personality, there comes these moments when you're aware that what's happening is not the real story. Unless you actually die, the real story is still ahead of you. This alone, this cruel mixture of consciousness and irrelevance, this built-in hollowness, is enough to account for how pissed off you are. You're miserable and ashamed if you don't believe your adolescent troubles matter, but you're stupid if you do. ~ Jonathan Franzen,
320:Type I behavior promotes greater physical and mental well-being. According to a raft of studies from SDT researchers, people oriented toward autonomy and intrinsic motivation have higher self-esteem, better interpersonal relationships, and greater general well-being than those who are extrinsically motivated. By contrast, people whose core aspirations are Type X validations such as money, fame, or beauty tend to have poorer psychological health. There’s even a connection between Type X and Type A. Deci found that those oriented toward control and extrinsic rewards showed greater public self-consciousness, acted more defensively, and were more likely to exhibit the Type A behavior pattern.5 ~ Daniel H Pink,
321:Yes, I hate orthodox criticism. I don't mean great criticism, like that of Matthew Arnold and others, but the usual small niggling, fussy-mussy criticism, which thinks it can improve people by telling them where they are wrong, and results only in putting them in straitjackets of hesitancy and self-consciousness, and weazening all vision and bravery.

...I hate it because of all the potentially shining, gentle, gifted people of all ages, that it snuffs out every year. It is a murderer of talent. And because the most modest and sensitive people are the most talented, having the most imagination and sympathy, these are the very first ones to get killed off. It is the brutal egotists that survive. ~ Brenda Ueland,
322:Why not? It’s simple. Unlike us, predators have no comprehension of their fundamental weakness, their fundamental vulnerability, their own subjugation to pain and death. But we know exactly how and where we can be hurt, and why. That is as good a definition as any of self-consciousness. We are aware of our own defencelessness, finitude and mortality. We can feel pain, and self-disgust, and shame, and horror, and we know it. We know what makes us suffer. We know how dread and pain can be inflicted on us—and that means we know exactly how to inflict it on others. We know how we are naked, and how that nakedness can be exploited—and that means we know how others are naked, and how they can be exploited. ~ Jordan Peterson,
323:Why not? It’s simple. Unlike us, predators have no comprehension of their fundamental weakness, their fundamental vulnerability, their own subjugation to pain and death. But we know exactly how and where we can be hurt, and why. That is as good a definition as any of self-consciousness. We are aware of our own defencelessness, finitude and mortality. We can feel pain, and self-disgust, and shame, and horror, and we know it. We know what makes us suffer. We know how dread and pain can be inflicted on us—and that means we know exactly how to inflict it on others. We know how we are naked, and how that nakedness can be exploited—and that means we know how others are naked, and how they can be exploited. ~ Jordan B Peterson,
324:On being conscious of being a writer:
As soon as one is aware of being “somebody,” to be watched and listened to with extra interest, input ceases, and the performer goes blind and deaf in his overanimation. [...] Most of the best fiction is written out of early impressions, taken in before the writer became conscious of himself as a writer. The best seeing is done by the hunted and the hunter, the vulnerable and the hungry; the “successful” writer acquires a film over his eyes. His eyes get fat. Self-importance is a thickened, occluding form of self-consciousness. The binge, the fling, the trip – all attempt to shake the film and get back under the dinning-room table, with a child’s beautifully clear eyes. ~ John Updike,
325:Failure to recognize one's own absolute significance is equivalent to a denial of human worth; this is a basic error and the origin of all unbelief. If one is so faint-hearted that he is powerless even to believe in himself, how can he believe in anything else? The basic falsehood and evil of egoism lie not in this absolute self-consciousness and self-evaluation of the subject, but in the fact that, ascribing to himself in all justice an absolute significance, he unjustly refuses to others this same significance. Recognizing himself as a centre of life (which as a matter of fact he is), he relegates others to the circumference of his own being and leaves them only an external and relative value. ~ Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyov,
326:I fear the democratization of plastic surgery, when it's so cheap that everyone - the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker - goes under the knife and winds up looking like these tightly pulled, slightly surprised-looking society and celebrity aliens from Planet Botox. . . . When I was young, I could have bottled up my self-loathing and filled a mile of train cars with it. Now that I'm old, I can't think of anyone I'd rather be than me. . . . That's what we need now: surgeons who can slice away the self-consciousness, the fear, the loneliness, and inject a little hope instead. A little love. Or a doctor who implants only high spirits, penchants for practical jokes, or the ability to cha-cha even to a dirge beat. ~ Lorna Landvik,
327:As masculine self-consciousness grows stronger, the stage of matriarchy is followed by that of division. Symptomatic of this transition period is the twin-brother motif in mythology, which expresses the mutual affinity of opposites. This division turns destructively against itself in self-mutilation and suicide. As we saw, in uroboric and matriarchal castration the will of the Great Mother was paramount. But the centroversion tendency which underlies the ego-hero’s struggle for self-preservation and which first takes the form of anxiety, advances beyond the passive, narcissistic stage and turns into resistance, defiance, and aggression directed against the Great Mother, as illustrated mythologically in the story of Hippolytus. ~ Erich Neumann,
328:Unlike egotism, the drive to significance is a simple extension of the creative impulse of God that gave us being. It is not filtered through self-consciousness any more than is our lunge to catch a package falling from someone’s hand. It is outwardly directed to the good to be done. We were built to count, as water is made to run downhill. We are placed in a specific context to count in ways no one else does. That is our destiny. Our hunger for significance is a signal of who we are and why we are here, and it also is the basis of humanity’s enduring response to Jesus. For he always takes individual human beings as seriously as their shredded dignity demands, and he has the resources to carry through with his high estimate of them. ~ Dallas Willard,
329:I remembered what it is I like about sex: what I like about sex is that I can lose myself in it entirely. Sex, in fact, is the most absorbing activity I have discovered in adulthood. When I was a child I used to feel this way about all sorts of things—Legos, The Jungle Book, The Hardy Boys, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Saturday morning cartoons...I could forget where I was, the time of day, who I was with. Sex is the only thing I've found like that as a grown-up, give or take the odd film: books are no longer like that once you're out of your teens, and I've certainly never found it in my work. All the horrible pre-sex self-consciousness drains out of me, and I forget where I am, the time of day...and yes, I forget who I'm with, for the time being. ~ Nick Hornby,
330:You can’t re-create the first time you promise to love someone or the first time you feel loved by another. You cannot relive the sensation of fear, admiration, self-consciousness, passion, and desire all mixed into one because it never happens twice. You chase it like the first high for the rest of your life. It doesn’t mean you can’t love another or move on; it just means that the one spontaneous moment, the split second that you took the leap, when your heart was racing and your mind was muddled with What ifs?—that moment—will never happen the same way again. It will never feel as intense as the first time. At least, that’s the way I remember it. That’s why my mother always said we memorialize our past. Everything seems better in a memory. ~ Renee Carlino,
331:There is an irreducible scandal, something traumatic and unexpected, in the encounter with another subject, in the fact that the subject (a self-consciousness) encounters outside itself, in front of it, another living being there in the world, among things, which also claims to be a subject (a self-consciousness). As a subject, I am by definition alone, a singularity opposed to the entire world of things, a punctuality to which all the world appears, and all the phenomenological descriptions of my being always "together-with" others cannot ultimately cover up the scandal of there being another such singularity. In the guise of a living being in front of me which also claims to be a self-consciousness, infinity assumes a determinate form"- Hegel, ~ Slavoj i ek,
332:They have the opposite problem: they shoulder intolerable burdens of self-disgust, self-contempt, shame and self-consciousness. Thus, instead of narcissistically inflating their own importance, they don’t value themselves at all, and they don’t take care of themselves with attention and skill. It seems that people often don’t really believe that they deserve the best care, personally speaking. They are excruciatingly aware of their own faults and inadequacies, real and exaggerated, and ashamed and doubtful of their own value. They believe that other people shouldn’t suffer, and they will work diligently and altruistically to help them alleviate it. They extend the same courtesy even to the animals they are acquainted with—but not so easily to themselves. ~ Jordan Peterson,
333:Questioner: Are you happy or not? KRISHNAMURTI: I don’t know. I have never thought about it. The moment you think you are happy, you cease to be happy, don’t you? When you are playing and shouting with joy, what happens the moment you become conscious that you are joyous? You stop being joyous. Have you noticed it? So happiness is something which is not within the field of self-consciousness. When you try to be good, are you good? Can goodness be practised? Or is goodness something that comes naturally because you see, observe, understand? Similarly, when you are conscious that you are happy, happiness goes out of the window. To seek happiness is absurd, because there is happiness only when you don’t seek it. Do you know what the word “humility” means? ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti,
334:They have the opposite problem: they shoulder intolerable burdens of self-disgust, self-contempt, shame and self-consciousness. Thus, instead of narcissistically inflating their own importance, they don’t value themselves at all, and they don’t take care of themselves with attention and skill. It seems that people often don’t really believe that they deserve the best care, personally speaking. They are excruciatingly aware of their own faults and inadequacies, real and exaggerated, and ashamed and doubtful of their own value. They believe that other people shouldn’t suffer, and they will work diligently and altruistically to help them alleviate it. They extend the same courtesy even to the animals they are acquainted with—but not so easily to themselves. ~ Jordan B Peterson,
335:Philosophers are in the habit of indicating the object of judgement by the letter p. There is an insouciance with respect to this fateful letter. It stands ready quietly, unobstrusively, to assure us that we know what we are talking about. For example, when we do epistemology, we are interested in what it is for someone to know - know what? oh yes: p. If we inquire into rational requirements on action or intention, we ask what it is to be obliged to - what? oh yes: see to it that p, intend that, if p, then q, and so on. However, if we udnertake to reflect on thought, on its self-consciousness and its objectivity, then the letter p signifies the deepest question and the deepest comprehension. If only we understood the letter p, the whole world would be open to us. ~ Sebastian R dl,
336:By extrapolating a little from Freud, it becomes possible to think of nationalism as a kind of narcissism. A nationalist takes the neutral facts about a people - their language, habitat, culture, tradition and history- and turns these facts into a narrative, whose purpose is to illuminate the self-consciousness of a group, to enable them to think of themselves as a nation with a claim to self-determination. A nationalist, in other words, takes "minor differences"- indifferent in themselves- and transforms them into major differences. For this purpose, traditions are invented, a glorious past is gilded and refurbished for public consumption, and a people who might not have thought of themselves as a people at all suddenly begin to dream of themselves as a nation. ~ Michael Ignatieff,
337:By contrast, a man who has just learned to read and write responds, “To go by your words, they should all be white.” To go by your words—in that phrase, a level is crossed. The information has been detached from any person, detached from the speaker’s experience. Now it lives in the words, little life-support modules. Spoken words also transport information, but not with the self-consciousness that writing brings. Literate people take for granted their own awareness of words, along with the array of word-related machinery: classification, reference, definition. Before literacy, there is nothing obvious about such techniques. “Try to explain to me what a tree is,” Luria says, and a peasant replies, “Why should I? Everyone knows what a tree is, they don’t need me telling them. ~ James Gleick,
338:A prodigious expansion in Man's memory must have been the gift that differentiated mankind from his predecessors, and I surmise that this expansion in memory led to a simultaneous growth in the gift of language, these two powers generating in man that self-consciousness which is the third of the triune traits that alone make man unique. Those three gifts - memory, language, and self-consciousness - so interlock that they seem inseparable, the aspects of a quality that permitted us to achieve all the wonders we now know. With our cour- puters we seem bent on dispensing with human memory as we have known it in prehistory, and even in the modest degree that our parents knew it. I am asking myself whether Sorna could have possessed the power to spark what I have called these triune traits. ~ R Gordon Wasson,
339:The problem is this: nature has assembled all these species on this planet. The human species is no more important than any other species on this planet. For some reason, man accorded himself a superior place in this scheme of things. He thinks that he is created for some grander purpose than, if I could give a crude example, the mosquito that is sucking his blood. What is responsible for this is the value system that we have created. And the value system has come out of the religious thinking of man. Man has created religion because it gives him a cover. This demand to fulfill himself, to seek something out there was made imperative because of this self-consciousness in you which occurred somewhere along the line of the evolutionary process. Man separated himself from the totality of nature. ~ U G Krishnamurti,
340:There is no need to visit far-off lands to see how flow can be a natural part of living. Every child, before self-consciousness begins to interfere, acts spontaneously with total abandon and complete involvement. Boredom is something children have to learn the hard way, in response to artificially restricted choices. Again, this does not mean that children are always happy. Cruel or neglectful parents, poverty and sickness, the inevitable accidents of living make children suffer intensely. But a child is rarely unhappy without good reason. It is understandable that people tend to be so nostalgic about their early years; like Tolstoy’s Ivan Ilyich, many feel that the wholehearted serenity of childhood, the undivided participation in the here and now, becomes increasingly difficult to recapture as the years go by. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,
341:A less drastic obstacle to experiencing flow is excessive self-consciousness. A person who is constantly worried about how others will perceive her, who is afraid of creating the wrong impression, or of doing something inappropriate, is also condemned to permanent exclusion from enjoyment. So are people who are excessively self-centered. A self-centered individual is usually not self-conscious, but instead evaluates every bit of information only in terms of how it relates to her desires. For such a person everything is valueless in itself. A flower is not worth a second look unless it can be used; a man or a woman who cannot advance one’s interests does not deserve further attention. Consciousness is structured entirely in terms of its own ends, and nothing is allowed to exist in it that does not conform to those ends. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,
342:But it’s okay, it’s fine, because Tara is saying let’s go and dance before it wears off, so they all go and stand in the railway arches in a loose group facing the DJ and the lights, and they dance for a while in the dry ice, grinning and nodding and exchanging that strange puckered frown, eyebrows knitted, but the nodding and grinning are less from elation now, more from a need for reassurance that they’re still having fun, that it isn’t all about to end. Dexter wonders if he should take his shirt off, that sometimes helps, but the moment has passed. Someone nearby shouts ‘tune’ half-heartedly, but no-one’s convinced, there are no tunes. The enemy, self-consciousness, is creeping up on them and Gibbsy or Biggsy is the first to crack, declaring that the music is shit and everyone stops dancing immediately as if a spell has been broken. ~ David Nicholls,
343:The white delusion of racial superiority insulates itself against refutation. Correspondingly, on the positive epistemic side, the route to black knowledge is the self-conscious recognition of white ignorance (including its blackfaced manifestation in black consciousness itself). Du Bois prescribes a critical cognitive distancing from “a world which yields [the Negro] no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world,” a “sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others.”27 The attainment of “second sight” requires an understanding of what it is about whites and the white situation that motivates them to view blacks erroneously. One learns in part to see through identifying white blindness and avoiding the pitfalls of putting on these spectacles for one’s own vision.28 So ~ Charles W Mills,
344:Twelve years ago you decided what I deserved, and I ended up alone. So this time I will decide what I deserve.” Ignoring a twinge of self-consciousness, she faced him and began to undo the front fastenings of her pelisse-robe. “And I deserve this. I deserve you.
His breathing grew labored as he stared at her hands with a searing intensity. “What are you doing, Jane?”
“What does it look like?” She slid out of her gown and let it fall to the floor, leaving her standing before him in only her petticoats, corset, and shift. “I’m seducing you.”
Dom’s eyes narrowed on her, and she panicked. Was she being too bold? Too shameless?
Too daft?
She was daft, to be standing half-dressed like this in a stable, when all it would take was a groom coming down from his room above to turn this into the most mortifying night of her life. ~ Sabrina Jeffries,
345:Do you know my best quality?” she asks.
”Of your many, I could not say, my darling.”
”I see the best in people. I fall in love with people when I see a window into their beings, their shining moments. I’ve fallen in love with so many people but the trouble is I fall out of love so quickly too. I see the worst in them just as easily.
”Do you know I fell in love with you right away? That day at the Trotters’ I had noted you because you were new, of course, and then you sat down at the piano, and you played a few notes, but you played them so well, with no self consciousness, and no idea that anyone might be listening. It was in that room off the garden and you were the only one there. I was passing through on the way to the ladies’ room and saw you there. I fell in love with you right then, and so I slipped my drink all over myself so I could meet you.” ~ Janice Y K Lee,
346:Against the monster, I’ve always wanted meaning. Not for its own sake, because in the usual course of things, who needs the self-consciousness of it? Let meaning be immanent, noted in passing, if at all. But that won’t do when the monster has its funnel driven into the back of your head and is sucking the light coming through your eyes straight out of you into the mouth of oblivion. So like a cripple I long for what others don’t notice they have: ordinary meaning.    Instead, I have words. The monster doesn’t take words. It may take speech, but not words in the head, which are its minions. The army of the tiny, invisible dead wielding their tiny, spinning scythes, cutting at the flesh of the mind. Unlike ordinary blades, they sharpen with use. They’re keenest in repetition. Self-accusation being nothing if not repetitive. There is nothing deep about this. It is merely endless. ~ Adam Haslett,
347:After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro... two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.

The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, — this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. ~ W E B Du Bois,
348:This whole problem of naming a feeling, of giving it a term, is part of the problem of consciousness. Take a word like 'love'. How immediately your mind rejoices in that word! It has such significance, such beauty, ease, and all the rest of it. And the word 'hate' immediately has quite another significance, something to be avoided, to be got rid of, to be shunned, and so on. So words have an extraordinary psychological effect on the mind, whether we are conscious of it or not.

Now, to go beyond, to transcend all that, requires tremendous attention. This total attention, in which there is no choice, no sense of becoming, of changing, altering, wholly frees the mind from the process of self-consciousness; there is then no experiencer who is accumulating, and it is only then that the mind can be truly said to be free from sorrow. It is the accumulation that is the cause of sorrow. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti,
349:Excessive preoccupation with psyche and evil - either from supportive or antagonistic standpoints - fosters a degree of self-consciousness and self-importance that is very likely to eclipse the ever-present mystery of God's truth. Discernments are essential, but it is not at all necessary or helpful to become attached to making them. If possible, it is best to see psychological phenomena such as dreams, fantasies, images, and thoughts as manifestations of God's potential in the same way that nature, art, relationships, and all other phenomena are. Gazing into an empty, blue sky, kneeling in prayer in a cathedral, and recalling memories associated with a dream can all be worthwhile spiritual explorations. The can also all be distractions from spiritual exploration. The beauty of the sky or the cathedral can create an absorption with sensate experience, just as dream analysis can create ego-absorption. ~ Gerald G May,
350:The abstraction expresses a judgement, - an affirmative and negative one at the same time, praise and blame[.] What a man praises and approves, that is God to him; what he blames, condemns is the non-divine. … In religion man frees himself from the limits of life; … the self-consciousness of man freed from all discordant elements; … all which he excludes from God is … judged to be non-divine, and what is non-divine to be worthless, nothing. … The divine being is the pure subjectivity of man freed from all else, from everything objective, … The process of discrimination, the separating of the intelligent from the non-intelligent, of personality from Nature, of the perfect from the imperfect, necessarily therefore takes place in the subject, not in the object, the idea of God lies not at the beginning but at the end of sensible existence, of the world. … [T]his Omega of sensible existence become an Alpha[.] ~ Ludwig Feuerbach,
351:It is conceivable that the postmodern attitude has already drawn some strength from the new Darwinian paradigm. Sociobiology, however astringent its reception in academia, began seeping into popular culture two decades ago. In any event, the future progress of Darwinism may strengthen the postmodern mood. Surely, within academia, deconstructionists and critical legal scholars can find much to like in the new paradigm. And surely, outside of academia, one reasonable reaction to evolutionary psychology is a self-consciousness so acute, and a cynicism so deep, that ironic detachment from the whole human enterprise may provide the only relief.
Thus the difficult question of whether the human animal can be a moral animal —the question that modern cynicism tends to greet with despair—may seem increasingly quaint. The question may be whether, after the new Darwinism takes root, the word moral can be anything but a joke. ~ Robert Wright,
352:Our age makes higher demands of solidarity and benevolence on people today than ever before. Never before have people been asked to stretch out so far, and so consistently, so systematically, so as a matter of course, to the stranger outside the gates” (p. 695). How do we manage to do it? Or how could we? “Well, one way is that performance of these standards has become part of what we understand as a decent, civilized human life” (p. 696). The mechanism then becomes shame: to not meet these expectations is not only to be abnormal but almost inhuman. One can see this at work in a heightened version of holier-than-Thou: You don’t recycle (gasp)? You use plastic shopping bags (horror)? You don’t drive a Prius (eek!)? “You won’t wear the ribbon?!”44 This has to also be seen in light of Taylor’s earlier analysis of the sociality of mutual display and the self-consciousness it generates (pp. 481-82). So what we get is justice chic. ~ James K A Smith,
353:You think there's something materialistic about collecting books, but really collectors are the last romantics. We're the only ones who still love books as objects."
"That's the question," said Jess. "How do you love them if you're always selling them?"
"I don't sell everything," he said. "You haven't seen my own collection."
"What do you have?"
"First editions. Yeats, Dickinson- all three volumes; Eliot, Pound, Millay..." He had noticed the books she read in the store. "Plath. I also have Elizabeth Bishop."
"I wish I could see them," Jess said.
"You would have come to my house."
"Are you inviting me?" She must have known this was a loaded question, but she asked without flirtatiousness or self-consciousness, as if to say, I only want to know as a point of information.
Yes, he thought, I'm inviting you, but he did not say yes. He was her employer. She could act with a certain plucky independence, but he would always be the big bad wolf. ~ Allegra Goodman,
354:It was only as a mature man that I became mortal.
The visceral insight of my end came to me abruptly more than a dozen years ago. I had wasted an entire evening playing an addictive, firstperson shooter video game that belonged to my teenage son—running through eerily empty halls, flooded corridors, nightmarishly twisting tunnels, and empty plazas under a foreign sun, emptying my weapons at hordes of aliens pursuing me relentlessly. I went to bed late and, as always, fell asleep easily. I awoke abruptly a few hours later. Knowledge had turned to certainty
—I was going to die! Not right there and then, but someday.
...
My interpretation of this queer event is that all the killing in the video game triggered
unconscious thoughts about the annihilation of the self. These processes produced sufficient anxiety that my cortico-thalamic complex woke up on its own, without any external trigger. At that point, self-consciousness lit up and was confronted with its mortality. ~ Christof Koch,
355:The most important factor in every function is: ‘Is it under our control or not?’ So when imagination is under our control we do not even call it imagination; we call it by various names—visualization, creative thinking, inventive thinking—you can find a name for each special case. But when it comes by itself and controls us so that we are in its power, then we call it imagination. Again, there is another side of imagination which we miss in ordinary understanding. This is that we imagine non-existent things—non-existent capacities, for instance. We ascribe to ourselves powers which we do not have; we imagine ourselves to be self-conscious although we are not. We have imaginary powers and imaginary self-consciousness and we imagine ourselves to be one, when really we are many different ‘I’s. There are many such things that we imagine about ourselves and other people. For instance, we imagine that we can ‘do’, that we have choice; we have no choice, we cannot ‘do’, things just happen to us. ~ P D Ouspensky,
356:But with the judge it is otherwise; since he governs mind by mind; he ought not therefore to have been trained among vicious minds, and to have associated with them from youth upwards, and to have gone through the whole calendar of crime, only in order that he may quickly infer the crimes of others as he might their bodily diseases from his own self-consciousness; the honourable mind which is to form a healthy judgment should have had no experience or contamination of evil habits when young. And this is the reason why in youth good men often appear to be simple, and are easily practised upon by the dishonest, because they have no examples of what evil is in their own souls. Yes, he said, they are far too apt to be deceived. Therefore, I said, the judge should not be young; he should have learned to know evil, not from his own soul, but from late and long observation of the nature of evil in others: knowledge should be his guide, not personal experience. Yes, he said, that is the ideal of a judge. Yes, ~ Plato,
357:"The Bible presents a cataclysm at the beginning of time, which is the emergence of self-consciousness in human beings, which puts a rift in the structure of Being. That's the right way to think about it. That's given cosmic significance. You can dispense with that and say that nothing that happens to human beings is of cosmic significance, that we're these short lived, mold-like entities that are like cancers on this tiny little planet, rotating out in the middle of nowhere, on the edge of some unknown galaxy in the middle of infinite space, and nothing that happens to us matters. This is not a road that you can walk down and live well. For all intents and purposes, it's untrue. If fact, if you really walk down that road, and you take it really seriously, you end up not living at all. The kind of conclusions suicidal people draw about the utility of life prior to wishing for its cessation, are very much like the conclusions that you draw if you walk down that particular line of reasoning long enough." ~ Jordan Peterson,
358:"The Bible presents a cataclysm at the beginning of time, which is the emergence of self-consciousness in human beings, which puts a rift in the structure of Being. That's the right way to think about it. That's given cosmic significance. You can dispense with that and say that nothing that happens to human beings is of cosmic significance, that we're these short lived, mold-like entities that are like cancers on this tiny little planet, rotating out in the middle of nowhere, on the edge of some unknown galaxy in the middle of infinite space, and nothing that happens to us matters. This is not a road that you can walk down and live well. For all intents and purposes, it's untrue. If fact, if you really walk down that road, and you take it really seriously, you end up not living at all. The kind of conclusions suicidal people draw about the utility of life prior to wishing for its cessation, are very much like the conclusions that you draw if you walk down that particular line of reasoning long enough." ~ Jordan B Peterson,
359:...out of the counterfeiting of the black American's identity [in blackface minstrelsy] there arises a profound doubt in the white man's mind as to the authenticity of his own image of himself. He, after all, went into the business when he refused the king's shilling and revolted. He had put on a mask of his own, as it were...For the ex-colonials, the declaration of an American identity meant the assumption of a mask, and it imposed not only the discipline of national self-consciousness, it gave Americans an ironic awareness of the joke that always lies between appearance and reality, between the discontinuity of social tradition and that sense of the past which clings to the mind. And perhaps even an awareness of the joke that society is man's creation, not God's. Americans began their revolt from the English fatherland when they dumped the tea into Boston Harbor, masked as Indians, and the mobility of the society created in this limitless space has encouraged the use of the mask for good and evil ever since. ~ Ralph Ellison,
360:Nobody can say anything about you. Whatsoever people say is about themselves. But you become very shaky, because you are still clinging to a false center. That false center depends on others, so you are always looking to what people are saying about you. And you are always following other people, you are always trying to satisfy them. You are always trying to be respectable, you are always trying to decorate your ego. This is suicidal. Rather than being disturbed by what others say, you should start looking inside yourself…

Whenever you are self-conscious you are simply showing that you are not conscious of the self at all. You don’t know who you are. If you had known, then there would have been no problem— then you are not seeking opinions. Then you are not worried what others say about you— it is irrelevant!

When you are self-conscious you are in trouble. When you are self-conscious you are really showing symptoms that you don’t know who you are. Your very self-consciousness indicates that you have not come home yet. ~ Osho,
361:The original Man and Woman, existing in unbroken unity with their Creator, did not appear conscious (and certainly not self-conscious). Their eyes were not open. But, in their perfection, they were also less, not more, than their post-Fall counterparts. Their goodness was something bestowed, rather than deserved or earned. They exercised no choice. God knows, that’s easier. But maybe it’s not better than, for example, goodness genuinely earned. Maybe, even in some cosmic sense (assuming that consciousness itself is a phenomenon of cosmic significance), free choice matters. Who can speak with certainty about such things? I am unwilling to take these questions off the table, however, merely because they are difficult. So, here’s a proposition: perhaps it is not simply the emergence of self-consciousness and the rise of our moral knowledge of Death and the Fall that besets us and makes us doubt our own worth. Perhaps it is instead our unwillingness—reflected in Adam’s shamed hiding—to walk with God, despite our fragility and propensity for evil. ~ Jordan Peterson,
362:The original Man and Woman, existing in unbroken unity with their Creator, did not appear conscious (and certainly not self-conscious). Their eyes were not open. But, in their perfection, they were also less, not more, than their post-Fall counterparts. Their goodness was something bestowed, rather than deserved or earned. They exercised no choice. God knows, that’s easier. But maybe it’s not better than, for example, goodness genuinely earned. Maybe, even in some cosmic sense (assuming that consciousness itself is a phenomenon of cosmic significance), free choice matters. Who can speak with certainty about such things? I am unwilling to take these questions off the table, however, merely because they are difficult. So, here’s a proposition: perhaps it is not simply the emergence of self-consciousness and the rise of our moral knowledge of Death and the Fall that besets us and makes us doubt our own worth. Perhaps it is instead our unwillingness—reflected in Adam’s shamed hiding—to walk with God, despite our fragility and propensity for evil. ~ Jordan B Peterson,
363:After a heated dispute, we each undertook an assignment for the next class: to engage in one pleasurable activity and one philanthropic activity, and write about both. The results were life-changing. The afterglow of the “pleasurable” activity (hanging out with friends, or watching a movie, or eating a hot fudge sundae) paled in comparison with the effects of the kind action. When our philanthropic acts were spontaneous and called upon personal strengths, the whole day went better. One junior told about her nephew phoning for help with his third-grade arithmetic. After an hour of tutoring him, she was astonished to discover that “for the rest of the day, I could listen better, I was mellower, and people liked me much more than usual.” The exercise of kindness is a gratification, in contrast to a pleasure. As a gratification, it calls on your strengths to rise to an occasion and meet a challenge. Kindness is not accompanied by a separable stream of positive emotion like joy; rather, it consists in total engagement and in the loss of self-consciousness. Time stops. ~ Martin E P Seligman,
364:Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way. The enjoyments of life (such was now my theory) are sufficient to make it a pleasant thing, when they are taken en passant, without being made a principal object. Once make them so, and they are immediately felt to be insufficient. They will not bear a scrutinizing examination. Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so. The only chance is to treat, not happiness, but some end external to it, as the purpose of life. Let your self-consciousness, your scrutiny, your self-interrogation, exhaust themselves on that; and if otherwise fortunately circumstanced you will inhale happiness with the air you breathe, without dwelling on it or thinking about it, without either forestalling it in imagination, or putting it to flight by fatal questioning. ~ John Stuart Mill,
365:Mindfulness practice means that we commit fully in each moment to being present. There is no "performance." There is just this moment. We are not trying to improve or to get anywhere else. We are not even running after special insights or visions. Nor are we forcing ourselves to be non-judgmental, calm, or relaxed. And we are certainly not promoting self-consciousness or indulging in self-preoccupation. Rather, we are simply inviting ourselves to interface with this moment in full awareness, with the intentino to embody as best we can an orientation of calmness, mindfulness, and equanimity right here and now.

Of course, with continued practice and the right kind of firm yet gentle effort, calmness and mindfulness and equanimity develop and deepen on their own, out of your commitment to dwell in stillness and to observe without reacting and judging. Realizatinos and insights, profound experiences of stillness and joy, do come. But it would be incorrect to say that we are practicing to make these experiences happen or that having more of them is better than having fewer of them. ~ Jon Kabat Zinn,
366:Monsieur Girard grinned at the effect his story had had, and moved on, grunting disparagingly at another student’s efforts. As he approached her,
Caitlyn went back to work, afraid to be caught slacking. He came to stand behind her, watching her attempts, and despite her best efforts her arm
slowed and then dropped as she was overcome with self-consciousness.
“Do you, too, have a brilliant artist locked in your head?” he asked.
“No. I’m beginning to think I don’t know a thing about art.”
“Class! Do you hear? She knows nothing about art! And she proves it in her drawing.”
Caitlyn cringed.
“This,” he went on, laying his hand upon her head, “is the proper state of mind for learning to draw. Your mind must be blank of your old ideas and
old ways of seeing. You must start fresh, like a baby who has never seen the world.” He dropped his hand from her head and pointed to the area
she’d shaded with parallel lines. “This is nice.”
“Thank you,” Caitlyn said in soft surprise.
He nodded in acknowledgment. “Keep listening. With open ears, you will be one of the few who learn. ~ Lisa Cach,
367:It was a dance like no other, a dance of seduction. Henry did not take his blue eyes off my face, he danced toward me, stamped his foot and clapped his hands as if he would strip me naked then and there before the whole court. I banished the thought of the watching queen from my mind. I kept my head up and my eyes fixed on the king, and I danced toward him, the sly tripping steps, with a sway of my hips and a turn of my head. We faced one another and he snatched me up in the air and held me, there was a ripple of applause, he lowered me gently to my feet and I felt my cheeks burning with a potent combination of self-consciousness, triumph, and desire. We parted to the beat of the tabor and then came back as the dance turned our steps toward each other again. Once again he threw me up in the air and this time slid me down, so that my body was pressed against his. I felt him down every inch of my body: his chest, his hose, his legs. We paused, our faces so close that if he had leaned forward he could have kissed me. I felt his breath on my face and then he said very quietly: “My chamber. Come at once.” ♦ ~ Philippa Gregory,
368:In a parent support group “...This is the miracle. We belong together because we are engaged in the same quest as we search for answers to our most anguished questions. In that journey, we reflect back to each other the meaning of our own experience. In telling the truth about myself, I discover the truth about myself. I have come to know myself in the honest, unashamed, unedited telling of my story. Like the others in the room, I let go of that vision of myself as someone who is holding it all together, who is in control. I let go, though not without some initial concern that I will be found out, that people will hide from me or laugh at me or feel superior to me. But my self-consciousness quickly fades away, because I am no longer lost. I am found. I am found within the circle of others through this community of fellow human beings who are hurting and afraid but fearless when it comes to admitting our need for help and support. This is where we belong, where we “fit” We share our stories, and as we join our stories with others who are on the same journey, we discovered a story that is shared.. We are not alone. ~ Katherine Ketcham,
369:"When Adam and Eve realize they're naked is that same moment they realize the difference between good and evil. What's the relationship between consciousness, knowledge of nakedness, and knowledge of good and evil? When you know that you're vulnerable, and they also developed a knowledge of death so there's deep knowledge of vulnerability, and they get embarrassed about that and they cover themselves up. So that's culture. So it's a very profound shock when they come to recognize that they're naked. It even causes Adam to run and hide from God. Then they develop the knowledge of good and evil. This is about how human beings have this peculiar capacity that no other creatures have. I know how I can be hurt, because I am aware of my own limitations – painfully aware. And now, because I know how I can be hurt, I know how you can be hurt. And I can take advantage of that. And that's how evil enters the world. It gives people another attribute of divinity, knowing the difference between good and evil. The cosmos switches when that self-consciousness manifests itself, and that's when the possibility of evil enters the world." ~ Jordan Peterson,
370:"When Adam and Eve realize they're naked is that same moment they realize the difference between good and evil. What's the relationship between consciousness, knowledge of nakedness, and knowledge of good and evil? When you know that you're vulnerable, and they also developed a knowledge of death so there's deep knowledge of vulnerability, and they get embarrassed about that and they cover themselves up. So that's culture. So it's a very profound shock when they come to recognize that they're naked. It even causes Adam to run and hide from God. Then they develop the knowledge of good and evil. This is about how human beings have this peculiar capacity that no other creatures have. I know how I can be hurt, because I am aware of my own limitations – painfully aware. And now, because I know how I can be hurt, I know how you can be hurt. And I can take advantage of that. And that's how evil enters the world. It gives people another attribute of divinity, knowing the difference between good and evil. The cosmos switches when that self-consciousness manifests itself, and that's when the possibility of evil enters the world." ~ Jordan B Peterson,
371:What I said was this: ‘Good. You have a religion, a faith in something. It is very good to have faith in something, whatever it may be, even if you don’t know exactly in whom or in what—even if you have not the least idea of the significance and the possibilities of what you have faith in. To have faith, whether consciously or even quite unconsciously, is very necessary and desirable for every being. ‘And it is desirable because it is by faith, and by faith alone, that there can appear the intensity of being-self-consciousness necessary for everyone, as well as the valuation of one’s own personal being as a particle of everything existing in the Universe. ” ‘But what has the destruction of the existence of another being to do with this faith—above all when you destroy it in the name of its Creator? Does not that “life,” which He created as He created yours, have the same value as your own? ” ‘Making use of your psychic strength and cunning, that is, those data with which our Common Creator has endowed you for the perfecting of your Reason, you take advantage of the psychic weakness of other beings and destroy their existence. ~ G I Gurdjieff,
372:Willed introversion, in fact, is one of the classic implements of creative genius and can be employed as a deliberate device. It drives the psychic energies into depth and activates the lost continent of unconscious infantile and archetypal images. The result, of course, may be a disintegration of consciousness more or less complete (neurosis, psychosis: the plight of spellbound Daphne); but on the other hand, if the personality is able to absorb and integrate the new forces, there will be experienced an almost superhuman degree of self-consciousness and masterful control. This is a basic principle of the Indian disciplines of yoga. It has been the way, also, of many creative spirits in the West.25 It cannot be described, quite, as an answer to any specific call. Rather, it is a deliberate, terrific refusal to respond to anything but the deepest, highest, richest answer to the as yet unknown demand of some waiting void within: a kind of total strike, or rejection of the offered terms of life, as a result of which some power of transformation carries the problem to a plane of new magnitudes, where it is suddenly and finally resolved. ~ Joseph Campbell,
373:Sex is a problem because it would seem that in the act there is complete absence of the self. In that moment you are happy because there is the cessation of self-consciousness, of the ‘me’, and desiring more of it—more of the abnegation of the self in which there is complete happiness through full fusion, integration—naturally it becomes all-important. Isn’t that so? Because it is something that gives me unadulterated joy, complete self-forgetfulness, I want more and more of it. Now, why do I want more of it? Because, everywhere else I am in conflict….In all our relationships with property, with people, with ideas there is conflict, pain, struggle, misery…. Naturally you want more of it because it gives you happiness, while all the rest leads you to misery…

So, the problem is not sex, surely, but how to be free from the self. You have tasted that state of being in which the self is not, if only for a few seconds, if only for a day,…so there is the constant longing for more of that self-free state…

Until you resolve the whole content of that conflict, this one release of the self, through sex, will remain a hideous problem… ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti,
374:IT WOULD BE interesting to examine this subject in terms of what is not a sense of humor. Lack of humor seems to come from the attitude of the “hard fact.” Things are very hard and deadly honest, deadly serious, like, to use an analogy, a living corpse. He lives in pain, has a continual expression of pain on his face. He has experienced some kind of hard fact—“reality”—he is deadly serious and has gone so far as to become a living corpse. The rigidity of this living corpse expresses the opposite of a sense of humor. It is as though somebody is standing behind you with a sharp sword. If you are not meditating properly, sitting still and upright, there will be someone behind you just about to strike. Or if you are not dealing with life properly, honestly, directly, someone is just about to hit you. This is the self-consciousness of watching yourself, observing yourself unnecessarily. Whatever we do is constantly being watched and censored. Actually it is not Big Brother who is watching; it is Big Me! Another aspect of me is watching me, behind me, just about to strike, just about to pinpoint my failure. There is no joy in this approach, no sense of humor at all. ~ Ch gyam Trungpa,
375:Now, for the preacher, the chief of these secondary sources is the testimony of the sacred Scriptures. Their authority as our rule of faith is inferred immediately from their inspired character; for if God is perfect truth, as must be assumed, or else all search for truth anywhere is preposterous; and if the Bible is God’s word, then it is infallible, and of course authoritative over the soul. But is the inspiration of the Bible self-evident to its readers? I answer, it is not immediately self-evident – that is to say, the proposition, “The Bible is inspired,” is not axiomatic – but it is readily found to be true upon bringing the internal and external evidences of it under the light of our self-consciousness, our mental and our moral intuitions. This is but saying that God, in revealing himself to man, has clothed his revelation with an amount of reasonable and moral evidence adapted to the creature’s nature, and sufficient, when inspected, to produce a perfect conviction. Thereupon the word of God assumes its place as of plenary authority over the soul in the department of which it professes to teach, that of our religious beliefs, duties, and redemption. ~ Robert Lewis Dabney,
376:Is one oppressed by the burden of his life? Then he can lay it at his divine partner's feet. Is self-consciousness too painful, the sense of being a separate individual, trying to make some kind of meaning out of who one is, what life is, and the like? Then one can wipe it away in the emotional yielding to the partner, forget oneself in the delirium of sex, and still be marvelously quickened in the experience. Is one weighed down by the guilt of his body, the drag of his animality that haunts his victory over decay and death? But this is just what the comfortable sex relationship is for: in sex the body and the consciousness of it are not longer separated; the body is no longer something we look at as alien to ourselves. As soon as it is fully accepted as a body by the partner, our self-consciousness vanishes; it merges with the body and with the self-consciousness and body of the partner. Four fragments of existence melt into one unity and things are no longer disjointed and grotesque: everything is "natural," functional, expressed as it should be-and so it is stilled and justified. All the more is guilt wiped away when the body finds its natural usage in the production of a child. ~ Ernest Becker,
377:Students of public speaking continually ask, "How can I overcome
self-consciousness and the fear that paralyzes me before an
audience?"
Did you ever notice in looking from a train window that some
horses feed near the track and never even pause to look up at the
thundering cars, while just ahead at the next railroad crossing a
farmer's wife will be nervously trying to quiet her scared horse as
the train goes by?
How would you cure a horse that is afraid of cars—graze him in a
back-woods lot where he would never see steam-engines or
automobiles, or drive or pasture him where he would frequently see
the machines?
Apply horse-sense to ridding yourself of self-consciousness and
fear: face an audience as frequently as you can, and you will soon stop shying. You can never attain
freedom from stage-fright by reading a treatise. A book may give
you excellent suggestions on how best to conduct yourself in the
water, but sooner or later you must get wet, perhaps even strangle
and be "half scared to death." There are a great many "wetless"
bathing suits worn at the seashore, but no one ever learns to swim
in them. To plunge is the only way. ~ Dale Carnegie,
378:Sin and neurosis have another side: not only their unreal self-inflation in the refusal to admit creatureliness but also a penalty for intensified self-consciousness: the failure to be consoled by shared illusions. The result is that the sinner (neurotic) is hyperconscious of the very thing he tries to deny: his creatureliness, his miserableness and unworthiness.41 The neurotic is thrown back on his true perceptions of the human condition, which caused his isolation and individuation in the first place. He tried to build a glorified private inner world because of his deeper anxieties, but life takes its revenge. The more he separates and inflates himself, the more anxious he becomes. The more he artificially idealizes himself, the more exaggeratedly he criticizes himself. He alternates between the extremes of “I am everything” and “I am nothing.”42 But it is clear that if one is going to be something he has to be a secure part of something else. There is no way to avoid paying the debt of dependency and yielding to the larger meaning of the rest of nature, to the toll of suffering and the death that it demands; and there is no way to justify this payment from within oneself, no matter how mightily one tries. ~ Ernest Becker,
379:Conditions can never improve for anyone until he desires Perfection and stops acknowledging a power opposed to God, or that there is something either in or outside of him that can prevent God’s Perfection from expressing. One’s very acknowledgment of a condition that is less than all of God is his deliberate choice of an imperfection, and that kind of choice is the fall of man. This is deliberate and intentional because he is free every moment to think whatsoever he chooses to think. Incidentally, it takes no more energy to think a thought or picture of Perfection than it does one of imperfection. “You are The Creator localized to design and create Perfection in your world and place in the Universe. If Perfection and Dominion are to be expressed, you must know and acknowledge only The Law of The One. The One exists and controls completely everywhere in the Universe. You are the Self-Consciousness of Life, The One Supreme ‘Presence’ of the Great Flame of Love and Light. You alone are the Chooser, the Decreer of the qualities and forms you wish to pour your Life into; for you are the only energizer of your world and all it contains. When you think or feel, part of your Life energy goes forth to sustain your creation. ~ Godfr Ray King,
380:For there is no joy in continuity, in the perpetual. We desire it only because the present is empty. A person who is trying to eat money is always hungry. When someone says, "Time to stop now!" he is in a panic because he has had nothing to eat yet, and wants more and more time to go on eating money, ever hopeful of satisfaction around the corner. We do not really want continuity, but rather a present experience of total happiness. The though of wanting such an experience to go on and on is a result of being self-conscious in the experience, and thsu incompletely aware of it. So long as there is the feeling of an "I" having this experience, the moment is not all. Eternal life is realized when the last trace of difference between "I" and "now" has vanished - when there is just this "now" and nothing else.
By contrast, hell or "everlasting damnation" is not the everlastingness of time going on forever, but of the unbroken circle, the continuity and frustration of going round and round in pursuit of something which can never be attained. Hell is the fatuity, the everlasting impossibility, of self-love, self-consciousness, and seld-possession. It is trying to see one´s own eyes, hear one´s own ears, and kiss one´s own lips. ~ Alan W Watts,
381:For there is no joy in continuity, in the perpetual. We desire it only because the present is empty. A person who is trying to eat money is always hungry. When someone says, "Time to stop now!" he is in a panic because he has had nothing to eat yet, and wants more and more time to go on eating money, ever hopeful of satisfaction around the corner. We do not really want continuity, but rather a present experience of total happiness. The thought of wanting such an experience to go on and on is a result of being self-conscious in the experience, and thus incompletely aware of it. So long as there is the feeling of an "I" having this experience, the moment is not all. Eternal life is realized when the last trace of difference between "I" and "now" has vanished - when there is just this "now" and nothing else.
By contrast, hell or "everlasting damnation" is not the everlastingness of time going on forever, but of the unbroken circle, the continuity and frustration of going round and round in pursuit of something which can never be attained. Hell is the fatuity, the everlasting impossibility, of self-love, self-consciousness, and seld-possession. It is trying to see one´s own eyes, hear one´s own ears, and kiss one´s own lips. ~ Alan W Watts,
382:For there is no joy in continuity, in the perpetual. We desire it only because the present is empty. A person who is trying to eat money is always hungry. When someone says, "Time to stop now!" he is in a panic because he has had nothing to eat yet, and wants more and more time to go on eating money, ever hopeful of satisfaction around the corner. We do not really want continuity, but rather a present experience of total happiness. The thought of wanting such an experience to go on and on is a result of being self-conscious in the experience, and thus incompletely aware of it. So long as there is the feeling of an "I" having this experience, the moment is not all. Eternal life is realized when the last trace of difference between "I" and "now" has vanished - when there is just this "now" and nothing else.
By contrast, hell or "everlasting damnation" is not the everlastingness of time going on forever, but of the unbroken circle, the continuity and frustration of going round and round in pursuit of something which can never be attained. Hell is the fatuity, the everlasting impossibility, of self-love, self-consciousness, and self-possession. It is trying to see one´s own eyes, hear one´s own ears, and kiss one´s own lips. ~ Alan W Watts,
383:Therefore, in reality what the English word 'Consciousness' refers to is a subcategory of quantitative (rather than what modern dictionaries claim it to be: qualitative) awareness. And if the English language were technically viable (as German claims to be, despite the fact that it is only so in a relative context), we would have witnessed -after removing the 'con'- the existence of a derivative of the word 'scire' to signal the verb 'to know' in modern dictionaries; but that is not the case. The conclusion that we now can draw, is that the English language intentionally inherited the word 'conscire' to signal to its speakers the real existence of the 'mutual knowing' paradigm in the universe, but it has left its own nation prone to ceaseless interpretation schemes rather than being established in linguistical rigidity on this specific topic. This explains the presence of the word/expression of 'self-consciousness' in the dictionary; it is certainly an oxymoron which has been relatively overcome by intending it to refer to a converging scheme of awareness. However it becomes incoherent with the word 'self-conscious' despite the fact that all what we took away was the suffix which is supposed to only signal a state or a condition rather than a vectorial form. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim,
384:You will go through your life thinking there was a day in second grade that you must have missed, when the grown-ups came in and explained, everything important to other kids. they said, 'Look, you're human, you're going to feel isolated and afraid a lot of the time, nad have bad self-esteem, and feel uniquely ruined, but here is the magic phrase that will take this feeling away. It will be like a feather that will lift you out of that fear and self-consciousness every single time, all through your life.' And then they told the cildren who were there that day the magic phrase that everyone else in the world knows about and uses when feeling blue, which only you don't know, because you were home sick the day the grown-ups told the children the way the whole world works.
But there was not such a day in school. No one got the instructions. That is the secret of life. Everyone is flailing around, winging it most of the time, trying to find the way out, or through, or up, without a map. This lack of instruction manual is how most people develop compassion, and how they figure out to show up, care, help and serve, as the only way of filling up and being free. Otherwise you gorw up to be someone who needs to dominate and shame others so no one will know that you weren't there the day the instructions were passed out. ~ Anne Lamott,
385:Conscious experience is at once the most familiar thing in the world and the most mysterious. There is nothing we know about more directly than consciousness, but it is far from clear how to reconcile it with everything else we know. Why does it exist? What does it do? How could it possibly arise from lumpy gray matter? We know consciousness far more intimately than we know the rest of the world, but we understand the rest of the world far better than we understand consciousness. Consciousness can be startlingly intense. It is the most vivid of phenomena; nothing is more real to us. But it can be frustratingly diaphanous: in talking about conscious experience, it is notoriously difficult to pin down the subject matter. The International Dictionary of Psychology does not even try to give a straightforward characterization: Consciousness: The having of perceptions, thoughts, and feelings; awareness. The term is impossible to define except in terms that are unintelligible without a grasp of what consciousness means. Many fall into the trap of confusing consciousness with self-consciousness—to be conscious it is only necessary to be aware of the external world. Consciousness is a fascinating but elusive phenomenon: it is impossible to specify what it is, what it does, or why it evolved. Nothing worth reading has been written about it. (Sutherland 1989) ~ David J Chalmers,
386:It is a curious fate to write for a people other than one’s own, and it is even stranger to write to the conquerors of one’s people. Wonder was expressed at the acrimony of the first colonized writers. Do they forget that they are addressing the same public whose tongue they have borrowed? However, the writer is neither unconscious, nor ungrateful, nor insolent. As soon as they dare speak, what will they tell just those people, other than of their malaise and revolt? Could words of peace or thoughts of gratitude be expected from those who have been suffering from a loan that compounds so much interest? For a loan which, besides, will never be anything but a loan. We are here, it is true, putting aside fact for conjecture. But it is so easy to read, so obvious. The emergence of a literature of a colonized people, the development of consciousness by North African writers for example, is not an isolated occurrence. It is part of the development of the self-consciousness of an entire human group. The fruit is not an accident or miracle of a plant but a sign of its maturity. At most, the surging of the colonized artist is slightly ahead of the development of collective consciousness in which he participates and which he hastens by participating in it. And the most urgent claim of a group about to revive is certainly the liberation and restoration of its language. ~ Albert Memmi,
387:author class:Jacopone da Todi
Love beyond all telling, Goodness beyond imagining, Light of infinite intensity Glows in my heart. I once thought that reason Had led me to You, And that through feeling I sensed Your presence, Caught a glimpse of You in similitudes, Knew You in Your perfection. I know now that I was wrong, That that truth was flawed. Light beyond metaphor, Why did You deign to come into this darkness? Your light does not illumine those who think they see You And believe they sound Your depths. Night, I know now, is day, Virtue no more to be found. He who witnesses Your splendor Can never describe it. On achieving their desired end Human powers cease to function, And the soul sees that what it thought was right Was wrong. A new exchange occurs At that point where all light disappears; A new and unsought state is needed: The soul has what it did not love, And is stripped of all it possessed, no matter how dear. In God the spiritual faculties Come to their desired end, Lose all sense of self and self-consciousness, And are swept into infinity. The soul, made new again, Marveling to find itself In that immensity, drowns. How this comes about it does not know. [2229.jpg] -- from Jacopone da Todi: Lauds (Classics of Western Spirituality), Translated by Serge and Elizabeth Hughes

~ beyond all telling (from Self-Annihilation and Charity Lead the Soul...)
,
388:Why am I violent, competitive, ambitious, acquisitive? Why is there in me this constant struggle to become? Obviously, I am running away, taking flight from something through ambition, through acquisitiveness, through wanting to be a success. I am afraid of something, which is making me do all these things. I am not for the moment concerned with the fear of darkness, of public opinion, of what somebody may or may not say of me, because all that is very superficial; I am trying to find out what it is that fundamentally making me afraid, which in turn drives me to be ambitious, competitive, acquisitive, envious, thereby creating animosity and all the rest of it.
First of all, it seems to me that we are very lonely people. I am very lonely, inwardly empty, and I don't like that state; I am afraid of it, so I shun it, I run away from it. The very running away creates fear, and to avoid that fear, I indulge in various kinds of action. There is obviously this emptiness in me, in you, from which the mind is escaping through action, through ambition, through the urge to be somebody, to acquire more knowledge - you know, the whole business of violence. And without running away, can the mind look at this emptiness, this extraordinary sense of loneliness, which is the ultimate expression of the self? - the self being the entity, the self-consciousness which is empty when it doesn't run. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti,
389:It is true, no doubt, that this principle of the necessary unity of apperception is itself an identical and therefore an analytic proposition; but it shows, nevertheless, the necessity of a synthesis of the manifold given in an intuition, a synthesis without which it would be impossible to think the thoroughgoing identity of self-consciousness. For through the *I*, as a simple representation, nothing manifold is given; only in intuition, which is distinct from this representation, can a manifold be given, and then, through *combination*, be thought in one consciousness. An understanding in which through self-consciousness all the manifold would be given at the same time would be one that *intuits*; our understanding can do nothing but *think*, and must seek intuition in the senses. I am conscious, therefore, of the identical self with respect to the manifold of the representations that are given to me in an intuition, because I call them one and all *my* representations, as constituting *one* intuition. This means that I am conscious *a priori* of a necessary synthesis of them, which is called the original synthetic unity of apperception, and under which all representations given to me must stand, but under which they must also be brought by means of a synthesis.”

—from Critique of Pure Reason . Translated, edited, and with an Introduction by Marcus Weigelt, based on the translation by Max Müller, pp. 128-129 ~ Immanuel Kant,
390:In the first movement, our infancy as a species, we felt no separation from the natural world around us. Trees, rocks, and plants surrounded us with a living presence as intimate and pulsing as our own bodies. In that primal intimacy, which anthropologists call "participation mystique," we were as one with our world as a child in the mother's womb.

Then self-consciousness arose and gave us distance on our world. We needed that distance in order to make decisions and strategies, in order to measure, judge and to monitor our judgments. With the emergence of free-will, the fall out of the Garden of Eden, the second movement began -- the lonely and heroic journey of the ego. Nowadays, yearning to reclaim a sense of wholeness, some of us tend to disparage that movement of separation from nature, but it brought us great gains for which we can be grateful. The distanced and observing eye brought us tools of science, and a priceless view of the vast, orderly intricacy of our world. The recognition of our individuality brought us trial by jury and the Bill of Rights.

Now, harvesting these gains, we are ready to return. The third movement begins. Having gained distance and sophistication of perception, we can turn and recognize who we have been all along. Now it can dawn on us: we are our world knowing itself. We can relinquish our separateness. We can come home again -- and participate in our world in a richer, more responsible and poignantly beautiful way than before, in our infancy. ~ Joanna Macy,
391:[God] tells the woman that she will now bring forth children in sorrow, and desire an unworthy, sometimes resentful man, who will in consequence lord her biological fate over her, permanently. What might this mean? It could just mean that God is a patriarchal tyrant, as politically motivated interpretations of the ancient story insist. I think it’s—merely descriptive.
Merely. And here is why: As human beings evolved, the brains that eventually gave rise to self-consciousness expanded tremendously. This produced an evolutionary arms race between fetal head and female pelvis.56 The female graciously widened her hips, almost to the point where running would no longer be possible. The baby, for his part, allowed himself to be born more than a year early, compared to other mammals of his size, and evolved a semi-collapsible head.57 This was and is a painful adjustment for both. The essentially fetal baby is almost completely dependent on his mother for everything during that first year. The programmability of his massive brain means that he must be trained until he is eighteen (or thirty) before being pushed out of the nest. This is to say nothing of the woman’s consequential pain in childbirth, and high risk of death for mother and infant alike. This all means that women pay a high price for pregnancy and child-rearing, particularly in the early stages, and that one of the inevitable consequences is increased dependence upon the sometimes unreliable and always problematic good graces of men. ~ Jordan Peterson,
392:[God] tells the woman that she will now bring forth children in sorrow, and desire an unworthy, sometimes resentful man, who will in consequence lord her biological fate over her, permanently. What might this mean? It could just mean that God is a patriarchal tyrant, as politically motivated interpretations of the ancient story insist. I think it’s—merely descriptive.
Merely. And here is why: As human beings evolved, the brains that eventually gave rise to self-consciousness expanded tremendously. This produced an evolutionary arms race between fetal head and female pelvis.56 The female graciously widened her hips, almost to the point where running would no longer be possible. The baby, for his part, allowed himself to be born more than a year early, compared to other mammals of his size, and evolved a semi-collapsible head.57 This was and is a painful adjustment for both. The essentially fetal baby is almost completely dependent on his mother for everything during that first year. The programmability of his massive brain means that he must be trained until he is eighteen (or thirty) before being pushed out of the nest. This is to say nothing of the woman’s consequential pain in childbirth, and high risk of death for mother and infant alike. This all means that women pay a high price for pregnancy and child-rearing, particularly in the early stages, and that one of the inevitable consequences is increased dependence upon the sometimes unreliable and always problematic good graces of men. ~ Jordan B Peterson,
393:For The New Year
FLUSHED with a crimson sunrise beauty,
The fair new year its promise gave;
Such dreams we had of love, of duty,
Of heights to scale, of foes to brave!
Oh, how hope's fire our future lighted-How much to do, how much to know,
Yet on its brink we shrank affrighted
A year ago.
And now the year is done--its pleasure
So brief, so bright--its hours of pain;
Some moments' memories we treasure,
Some recollections loathe in vain.
Oh, for a brain where could not waken
Remembrances of purpose crossed,
Of trusts abandoned, aims forsaken,
And chances lost!
The changing seasons thrust upon us
Another year, fair-faced and new;
What evil have the old years done us
That this in its turn will not do?
This, too, will die, and leave us grieving
For all the ills its arms enfold-For faiths betrayed, for friends deceiving,
And love grown cold.
We have been fooled. The hopes that fooled us-We know them now--have been a lie;
The star that led, the light that ruled us-We scorn them, and we pass them by.
Shut out hope's light; past is the season
When rose-red glow seemed good to see.
Look--by the cold white light of reason,
These things shall be:
122
A long, dim vista, blank and dreary-The same hard failure, small success;
The same tired heart, the brain still weary
Of its intense self-consciousness;
The old despair, the old repining,
And, through the future's deepest night,
Down life's untrodden ways still shining,
The old hope's light!
~ Edith Nesbit,
394:In the modern world, we often find ourselves in the unnatural position of meeting someone who knows little or nothing about us. That can add a little pressure to the occasion, and it may add more if your mother was prone to saying “You get only one chance to make a good first impression!” You may find yourself scanning the person for feedback so intensively that you start seeing things that aren’t there. A social psychology experiment from the 1980s makes the point. A makeup artist put realistic-looking “scars” on the faces of the subjects, who had been told that the purpose of the experiment was to see how a scar affected the way people reacted to them. The subjects were to have a conversation with someone, and the experimenters would observe the reaction. The subjects were shown their scars in a mirror, but then, right before their social encounter, they were told that the scar needed a bit of work; moisturizer would be added to keep it from cracking. In fact, though, the scar was removed. Then the subjects headed out to their social encounters with a warped idea of what they looked like. After the encounters, they were debriefed: Had they noticed their conversation partner reacting to the scar? Oh yes, many of them said. In fact, when they were shown video of the conversation partner, they could point to these reactions. Sometimes, for example, the person would look away from them—obviously averting their eyes from the scar. So again, a feeling—an uncomfortable feeling of self-consciousness—sponsors a kind of perceptual illusion, a basic misreading of the behavior of others. ~ Robert Wright,
395:The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world...

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself. ~ Karl Marx,
396:The whole crux and difficulty of human life lies here. Man is this mental being, this mental consciousness working as mental force, aware in a way of the universal force and life of which he is part but, because he has not knowledge of its universality or even of the totality of his own being, unable to deal either with life in general or with his own life in a really effective and victorious movement of mastery. He seeks to know Matter in order to be master of the material environment, to know Life in order to be master of the vital existence, to know Mind in order to be master of the great obscure movement of mentality in which he is not only a jet of light of self-consciousness like the animal, but also more and more a flame of growing knowledge. Thus he seeks to know himself in order to be master of himself, to know the world in order to be master of the world. This is the urge of Existence in him, the necessity of the Consciousness he is, the impulsion of the Force that is his life, the secret will of Sachchidananda appearing as the individual in a world in which He expresses and yet seems to deny Himself. To find the conditions under which this inner impulsion is satisfied is the problem man must strive always to resolve and to that he is compelled by the very nature of his own existence and by the Deity seated within him; and until the problem is solved, the impulse satisfied, the human race cannot rest from its labour. Either man must fulfil himself by satisfying the Divine within him or he must produce out of himself a new and greater being who will be more capable of satisfying it. He must either himself become a divine humanity or give place to Superman.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine,
397:Yet, at the same time, as the Eastern sages also knew, man is a worm and food for worms. This is the paradox: he is out of nature and hopelessly in it; he is dual, up in the stars and yet housed in a heart-pumping, breath-gasping body that once belonged to a fish and still carries the gill-marks to prove it. His body is a material fleshy casing that is alien to him in many ways—the strangest and most repugnant way being that it aches and bleeds and will decay and die. Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order to blindly and dumbly rot and disappear forever. It is a terrifying dilemma to be in and to have to live with. The lower animals are, of course, spared this painful contradiction, as they lack a symbolic identity and the self-consciousness that goes with it. They merely act and move reflexively as they are driven by their instincts. If they pause at all, it is only a physical pause; inside they are anonymous, and even their faces have no name. They live in a world without time, pulsating, as it were, in a state of dumb being. This is what has made it so simple to shoot down whole herds of buffalo or elephants. The animals don't know that death is happening and continue grazing placidly while others drop alongside them. The knowledge of death is reflective and conceptual, and animals are spared it. They live and they disappear with the same thoughtlessness: a few minutes of fear, a few seconds of anguish, and it is over. But to live a whole lifetime with the fate of death haunting one's dreams and even the most sun-filled days—that's something else. ~ Ernest Becker,
398:Looks are voluntary. But the full revelation of the subject in the face is not, as a rule, voluntary. Smiles are usually involuntary, and “gift smiles,” as one might call them, always so. Likewise laughter, to be genuine, must be involuntary—even though laughter is something of which only creatures with intentions, reason, and self-consciousness are capable. The important point is that, while smiling and laughing are movements of the mouth, the whole face is infused by them, so that the subject is revealed in them as "overcome". Laughing and smiling can also be willed, and when they are willed, they have a ghoulish, threatening quality, as when someone laughs cynically, or hides behind a smile. Voluntary laughter is a kind of spiritual armor, with which a person defends himself against a treacherous world by betraying it.

Blushes are more like tears than like laughter in that they cannot be intended. Only a rational being can blush, even though nobody can blush voluntarily. Even if, by some trick, you are able to make the blood flow into the surface of your cheeks, this would not be blushing but a kind of deception. And it is the involuntary character of the blush that conveys its meaning, which resides in the fact that it is the other who summons it. Looks directed to the looks of another have an “interrogatory aboutness,” so to speak. The person who looks at his companion is also aware that he is on the verge of looking into him. There is an element of overreaching here, which is inherited from the I-You encounter, and which changes the appearance of the human look in the eyes of the person looked at. Blushing is a natural response to this, a recognition that the glance that originated at the horizon where you are has touched the horizon in me. ~ Roger Scruton,
399:It is as if one of the grains of sand had stuck its neck out and begun to look around. We are that grain of sand, coming to the conclusion of our separateness. This is the “birth of ignorance” in its first stage, a kind of chemical reaction. Duality has begun. The second stage of ignorance-form is called “the ignorance born within.” Having noticed that one is separate, then there is the feeling that one has always been so. It is an awkwardness, the instinct toward self-consciousness. It is also one’s excuse for remaining separate, an individual grain of sand. It is an aggressive type of ignorance, though not exactly aggressive in the sense of anger; it has not developed as far as that. Rather it is aggression in the sense that one feels awkward, unbalanced, and so one tries to secure one’s ground, create a shelter for oneself. It is the attitude that one is a confused and separate individual, and that is all there is to it. One has identified oneself as separate from the basic landscape of space and openness. The third type of ignorance is “self-observing ignorance,” watching oneself. There is a sense of seeing oneself as an external object, which leads to the first notion of “other.” One is beginning to have a relationship with a so-called external world. This is why these three stages of ignorance constitute the skandha of form-ignorance; one is beginning to create the world of forms. When we speak of “ignorance” we do not mean stupidity at all. In a sense, ignorance is very intelligent, but it is a completely two-way intelligence. That is to say, one purely reacts to one’s projections rather than just seeing what is. There is no situation of “letting be” at all, because one is ignoring what one is all the time. That is the basic definition of ignorance. ~ Ch gyam Trungpa,
400:The glory of God is not contingent on man's good will, but all existence subserves his purposes. The system of the universe is as a celestial poem, whose beauty is from all eternity, and must not be marred by human interpolations. Things proceed as they were ordered, in their nice, and well-adjusted, and perfect harmony; so that as the hand of the skilful artist gathers music from the harp-strings, history calls it forth from the well-tuned chords of time. Not that this harmony can be heard during the tumult of action. Philosophy comes after events, and gives the reason of them, and describes the nature of their results. The great mind of collective man may, one day, so improve in self-consciousness as to interpret the present and foretell the future; but as yet, the end of what is now happening, though we ourselves partake in it, seems to fall out by chance. All is nevertheless one whole; individuals, families, peoples, the race, march in accord with the Divine will; and when any part of the destiny of humanity is fulfilled, we see the ways of Providence vindicated. The antagonisms of imperfect matter and the perfect idea, of liberty and necessary law, become reconciled. What seemed irrational confusion, appears as the web woven by light, liberty and love. But this is not perceived till a great act in the drama of life is finished. The prayer of the patriarch, when he desired to behold the Divinity face to face, was denied; but he was able to catch a glimpse of Jehovah, after He had passed by; and so it fares with our search for Him in the wrestlings of the world. It is when the hour of conflict is over, that history comes to a right understanding of the strife, and is ready to exclaim: "Lo! God is here, and we knew it not." ~ George Bancroft Literary and Historical Miscellanies (1855), p. 491,
401:What distinguishes consciousness of self
from the world of nature is not the simple act of contemplation by which it identifies itself with the
exterior world and finds oblivion, but the desire it can feel with regard to the world. This desire reestablishes
its identity when it demonstrates that the exterior world is something apart. In its desire, the
exterior world consists of what it does not possess, but which nevertheless exists, and of what it would
like to exist but which no longer does. Consciousness of self is therefore, of necessity, desire. But in order
to exist it must be satisfied, and it can only be satisfied by the gratification of its desire. It therefore acts in
order to gratify itself and, in so doing, it denies and suppresses its means of gratification. It is the epitome
of negation. To act is to destroy in order to give birth to the spiritual reality of consciousness. But to
destroy an object unconsciously, as meat is destroyed, for example, in the act of eating, is a purely animal
activity. To consume is not yet to be conscious. Desire for consciousness must be directed toward
something other than unconscious nature. The only thing in the world that is distinct from nature is,
precisely, self-consciousness. Therefore desire must be centered upon another form of desire; selfconsciousness
must be gratified by another form of self-consciousness. In simple words, man is not
recognized—and does not recognize himself—as a man as long as he limits himself to subsisting like an
animal. He must be acknowledged by other men. All consciousness is, basically, the desire to be
recognized and proclaimed as such by other consciousnesses. It is others who beget us. Only in
association do we receive a human value, as distinct from an animal value. ~ Albert Camus,
402:Wanting to touch him, too, she reached for the buttons of his waistcoat.
He broke their kiss to stare at her, a sudden sobering awareness in his eyes. “We shouldn’t do this here.”
There was no question what “this” meant. There was also no question that he was having second thoughts, pulling away from her. She refused to let him. “Why not? The grooms and the coachman have all gone to bed. And you did say you meant to marry me.”
“Yes, but you’re a lady,” he said fiercely. “You deserve better than to be tumbled in a stable.”
That was the trouble with Dom. Some part of him still saw her as the poor maiden needing his protection, not as a full-grown woman who had the same needs as he had. Who wanted and yearned just the same as he did.
He’d sent her away last night to protect her innocence, and then had avoided her for the next day. She wasn’t giving him the chance to do that again, not now that he’d allowed her a glimpse into his soul.
Dragging her hands free of his grip, she went to shut the door to the harness room. “Twelve years ago you decided what I deserved, and I ended up alone. So this time I will decide what I deserve.” Ignoring a twinge of self-consciousness, she faced him and began to undo the front fastenings of her pelisse-robe. “And I deserve this. I deserve you.
His breathing grew labored as he stared at her hands with a searing intensity. “What are you doing, Jane?”
“What does it look like?” She slid out of her gown and let it fall to the floor, leaving her standing before him in only her petticoats, corset, and shift. “I’m seducing you.”
Dom’s eyes narrowed on her, and she panicked. Was she being too bold? Too shameless?
Too daft?
She was daft, to be standing half-dressed like this in a stable, when all it would take was a groom coming down from his room above to turn this into the most mortifying night of her life. ~ Sabrina Jeffries,
403:The mystery of this courage of Bauer’s is Hegel’s Phenomenology. As Hegel here puts self-consciousness in the place of man, the most varied human reality appears only as a definite form, as a determination of self-consciousness. But a mere determination of self-consciousness is a “pure category,” a mere “thought” which I can consequently also abolish in “pure” thought and overcome through pure thought. In Hegel’s Phenomenology the material, perceptible, objective bases of the various estranged forms of human self-consciousness are left as they are. Thus the whole destructive work results in the most conservative philosophy because it thinks it has overcome the objective world, the sensuously real world, by merely transforming it into a “thing of thought” a mere determination of self-consciousness and can therefore dissolve its opponent, which has become ethereal, in the “ether of pure thought.” Phenomenology is therefore quite logical when in the end it replaces human reality by “Absolute Knowledge”—Knowledge, because this is the only mode of existence of self-consciousness, because self-consciousness is considered as the only mode of existence of man; absolute knowledge for the very reason that self-consciousness knows itself alone and is no more disturbed by any objective world. Hegel makes man the man of self-consciousness instead of making self-consciousness the self-consciousness of man, of real man, man living in a real objective world and determined by that world. He stands the world on its head and can therefore dissolve in the head all the limitations which naturally remain in existence for evil sensuousness, for real man. Besides, everything which betrays the limitations of general self-consciousness—all sensuousness, reality, individuality of men and of their world—necessarily rates for him as a limit. The whole of Phenomenology is intended to prove that self-consciousness is the only reality and all reality. ~ Karl Marx,
404:... [T]hose who most seem to be themselves appear to me people impersonating what they think they might like to be, believe they ought to be, or wish to be taken to be by whoever is setting standards. So in earnest are they that they don't even recognise that being in earnest -is the act-. For certain self-aware people, however, this is not possible: to imagine themselves being themselves, living their own real, authentic, or genuine life, has for them all the aspects of a hallucination.
I realise that what I am describing, people divided in themselves, is said to characterise mental illness and is the absolute opposite of our idea of emotional integration. The whole Western idea of mental health runs in precisely the opposite direction: what is desirable is congruity between your self-consciousness and your natural being. But there are those whose sanity flows from the conscious -separation- of those two things. If there even -is- a natural being, an irreducible self, it is rather small, I think, and may even be the root of all impersonation -- the natural being may be the skill itself, the innate capacity to impersonate. I'm talking about recognising that one is acutely a performer, rather than swallowing whole the guise of naturalness and pretending that it isn't a performance but you. . . . All I can tell you with certainty is that I, for one, have no self, and that I am unwilling or unable to perpetrate upon myself the joke of a self. It certainly does strike me as a joke about -my- self. What I have instead is a variety of impersonations I can do, and not only of myself -- a troupe of players that I have internalised, a permanent company of actors that I can call upon when a self is required, an ever-evolving stock of pieces and parts that forms my repertoire. But I certainly have no self independent of my imposturing, artistic efforts to have one. Nor would I want one. I am a theater and nothing more than a theater. ~ Philip Roth,
405:What one should add here is that self-consciousness is itself unconscious: we are not aware of the point of our self-consciousness. If ever there was a critic of the fetishizing effect of fascinating and dazzling "leitmotifs", it is Adorno: in his devastating analysis of Wagner, he tries to demonstrate how Wagnerian leitmotifs serve as fetishized elements of easy recognition and thus constitute a kind of inner-structural commodification of his music. It is then a supreme irony that traces of this same fetishizing procedure can be found in Adorno's own writings. Many of his provocative one-liners do effectively capture a profound insight or at least touch on a crucial point (for example: "Nothing is more true in pscyhoanalysis than its exaggeration"); however, more often than his partisans are ready to admit, Adorno gets caught up in his own game, infatuated with his own ability to produce dazzlingly "effective" paradoxical aphorisms at the expense of theoretical substance (recall the famous line from Dialectic of Englightment on how Hollywood's ideological maniuplation of social reality realized Kant's idea of the transcendental constitution of reality). In such cases where the dazzling "effect" of the unexpected short-circuit (here between Hollywood cinema and Kantian ontology) effectively overshadows the theoretical line of argumentation, the brilliant paradox works precisely in the same manner as the Wagnerian leitmotif: instead of serving as a nodal point in the complex network of structural mediation, it generates idiotic pleasure by focusing attention on itself. This unintended self-reflexivity is something of which Adorno undoubtedly was not aware: his critique of the Wagnerian leitmotif was an allegorical critique of his own writing. Is this not an exemplary case of his unconscious reflexivity of thinking? When criticizing his opponent Wagner, Adorno effectively deploys a critical allegory of his own writing - in Hegelese, the truth of his relation to the Other is a self-relation. ~ Slavoj i ek,
406:he used the phrase “naive transitivity” to describe what we and other movement activists in the 1960s were calling “rebellion.” For Freire, it was the stage when the masses, conscious that their oppression is rooted in objective conditions, “become anxious for freedom, anxious to overcome the silence in which they have always existed.” Freire was very clear, as were we, that this breaking of silence was not just a riot. Indeed, the masses were seeking to make their historical presence felt. He was equally clear, as were we, that it was not yet revolution because revolutions are made by people (as distinguished from masses) who have assumed “the role of subject in the precarious adventure of transforming and re-creating the world. They are not just denouncing but also announcing a new positive.”8 Or as we put it in Revolution and Evolution in the Twentieth Century, “a rebellion disrupts the society,” but “a revolution . . . begins with projecting the notion of a more human, human being,” one “who is more advanced in the qualities which only human beings have—creativity, consciousness and self-consciousness, a sense of political and social responsibility.”9 Soon thereafter, I read Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and was delighted to discover that his ideas of Education for Freedom, as education that not only makes the masses conscious of their oppression but engages them in struggles to transform themselves and their world, were very close to those that I had been putting forward.10 In this landmark work, Freire critiqued the bourgeois “banking method” of education, in which students are expected to memorize the “truths” of the dominant society—that is, “deposit” information in their head then “withdraw” it when required for tests, jobs, and other demands by overseers. Instead, Freire argued that critical thinking can develop only when questions are posed as problems. This problem-posing method provides no automatic “correct” answer. By contrast, students must discover their own understanding of the truth by developing a heightened awareness of their situation. ~ Grace Lee Boggs,
407:Twelve years ago you decided what I deserved, and I ended up alone. So this time I will decide what I deserve.” Ignoring a twinge of self-consciousness, she faced him and began to undo the front fastenings of her pelisse-robe. “And I deserve this. I deserve you.
His breathing grew labored as he stared at her hands with a searing intensity. “What are you doing, Jane?”
“What does it look like?” She slid out of her gown and let it fall to the floor, leaving her standing before him in only her petticoats, corset, and shift. “I’m seducing you.”
Dom’s eyes narrowed on her, and she panicked. Was she being too bold? Too shameless?
Too daft?
She was daft, to be standing half-dressed like this in a stable, when all it would take was a groom coming down from his room above to turn this into the most mortifying night of her life.
But she’d die before she let Dom see her squirm. With forced bravado, she planted her hands on her hips. “Well? Are you going to leave me here like this?”
Even as the words left her lips, she spotted the rather pronounced bulge in his trousers. That’s all she had time to notice before he was striding up to grab her head in both hands and seize her mouth with his once more.
This time their kiss was a war of tongues and teeth, both striving for mastery. Their hands darted everywhere in a thrilling flurry of unfastening and untying, a rush to see who could get the other one naked first. His boots ended in one corner, her half boots in another. Their clothes soon pooled around them on the floor of the harness room.
He got her shirt off, then stepped back before she could divest him of his drawers, and for one heart-stopping moment she feared he was having more second thoughts.
“Dom?” she asked, her cheeks flaming as she stood naked before him. She’d never stood naked before anyone, even a maid.
But the way Dom was scouring her with his rough gaze felt like a caress. A very carnal caress, which loosed a bevy of butterflies in her belly.
“I’ve spent years dreaming of you like this, sweeting,” he rasped. “Give me a moment to take it all in.”
“If you wish,” she whispered. And that would give her a moment to take him in. ~ Sabrina Jeffries,
408:We might call this existential paradox the condition of individuality finitude. Man has a symbolic identity that brings him sharply out of nature. He is a symbolic self, a creature with a name, a life history. He is a creator with a mind that soars out to speculate about atoms and infinity, who can place himself imaginatively at a point in space and contemplate bemusedly his own planet. This immense expansion, this dexterity, this ethereality, this self-consciousness gives to man literally the status of a small god in nature, as the Renaissance thinkers knew.

Yet, at the same time, as the Eastern sages also knew, man is a worm and food for worms. This is the paradox: he is out of nature and hopelessly in it; he is dual, up in the stars and yet housed in a heart-pumping, breath-gasping body that once belonged to a fish and still carries the gill-marks to prove it. His body is a material fleshy casing that is alien to him in many ways-the strangest and most repugnant way being that it aches and bleeds and will decay and die. Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order to blindly and dumbly rot and disappear forever. It is a terrifying dilemma to be in and to have to live with. The lower animals are, of course, spared this painful contradiction, as they lack a symbolic identity and the self-consciousness that goes with it. They merely act and move reflexively as they are driven by their instincts. If they pause at all, it is only a physical pause; inside they are anonymous, and even their faces have no name. They live in a world without time, pulsating, as it were, in a state of dumb being. This is what has made it so simple to shoot down whole herds of buffalo or elephants. The animals don't know that death is happening and continue grazing placidly while others drop alongside them. The knowledge of death is reflective and conceptual, and animals are spared it. They live and they disappear with the same thoughtlessness: a few minutes of fear, a few seconds of anguish, and it is over. But to live a whole lifetime with the fate of death haunting one's dreams and even the most sun-filled days-that's something else. ~ Ernest Becker,
409:Oh, God, Jane, why did I let you go?” he asked in an aching voice that resonated to her very soul. “I’ve been lost ever since.”
The words melted the last corner of ice in her heart, and when he lowered his head to hers, she rose to him like a shoot stretching for the sun.
Moaning low in his throat, he devoured her mouth, his kiss pure hot passion, so all-consuming that within moments she had to pull free just to breathe. Then he shifted his kisses to her cheek and ear and jaw, branding everything as his.
“I need you,” he said against her throat. “God help me for it, but I do. All these years without you have been hell.” Kissing her neck, he fisted his hands in her sleeves. “I want to strip this gown from you. I want to lay you down in that straw over there and have my way with you.”
The words made her exult. “Then do it,” she murmured against his hair. “Now. Tonight. Have your way with me, and I’ll have mine with you.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” he said darkly, but he seized her mouth again with such ferocity that it took her aback…then fed some feral part of her that had never felt like this with anyone but him. She couldn’t get her fill of his mouth…or his hands, which roamed her most familiarly.
Wanting to touch him, too, she reached for the buttons of his waistcoat.
He broke their kiss to stare at her, a sudden sobering awareness in his eyes. “We shouldn’t do this here.”
There was no question what “this” meant. There was also no question that he was having second thoughts, pulling away from her. She refused to let him. “Why not? The grooms and the coachman have all gone to bed. And you did say you meant to marry me.”
“Yes, but you’re a lady,” he said fiercely. “You deserve better than to be tumbled in a stable.”
That was the trouble with Dom. Some part of him still saw her as the poor maiden needing his protection, not as a full-grown woman who had the same needs as he had. Who wanted and yearned just the same as he did.
He’d sent her away last night to protect her innocence, and then had avoided her for the next day. She wasn’t giving him the chance to do that again, not now that he’d allowed her a glimpse into his soul.
Dragging her hands free of his grip, she went to shut the door to the harness room. “Twelve years ago you decided what I deserved, and I ended up alone. So this time I will decide what I deserve.” Ignoring a twinge of self-consciousness, she faced him and began to undo the front fastenings of her pelisse-robe. “And I deserve this. I deserve you. ~ Sabrina Jeffries,
410:The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.

It is, therefore, the task of history, once the other-world of truth has vanished, to establish the truth of this world. It is the immediate task of philosophy, which is in the service of history, to unmask self-estrangement in its unholy forms once the holy form of human self-estrangement has been unmasked. Thus, the criticism of Heaven turns into the criticism of Earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law, and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics. ~ Karl Marx,
411:Augustine, who assumed that Genesis 1 was chapter 1 in a book that contained the literal words of God, and that Genesis 2 was the second chapter in the same book, put the two chapters together and read the latter as a sequel. Genesis 2, he assumed, described the fall from the perfection and original goodness of creation depicted in chapter 1. So almost inevitably the Christian scriptures from the fourth century on were interpreted against the background of this (mis) understanding.

The primary trouble with this theory was that by the fourth century of the Common Era there were no Jews to speak of left in the Christian movement, and therefore the only readers and interpreters of the ancient Hebrew myths were Gentiles, who had no idea what these stories originally meant. Consequently, they interpreted them as perfection established by God in chapter 1, followed by perfection ruined by human beings in chapter 2. Why was that a problem? Well I, for one, have never known a Jewish scripture scholar to treat the Garden of Eden story in the same way that Gentiles treat it. Jews tend to see this story not as a narrative about sin entering the world, but as a parable about the birth of self-consciousness. It is, for the Jews, not a fall into sin, but a step into humanity. It is the birth of a new relationship with God, changing from master-servant to interdependent cooperation. The forbidden fruit was not from an apple tree, as so many who don’t bother to read the text seem to think. It was rather from “the tree of knowledge,” and the primary thing that one gained from eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge was the ability to discern good from evil. Gaining that ability did not, in the minds of the Jewish readers of the book of Genesis, corrupt human nature. It simply made people take responsibility for their freely made decisions. A slave has no such freedom. The job of the slave is simply to obey, not to think. The job of the slave-master is to command. Thus the relationship of the master to the slave is a relationship of the strong to the weak, the parent to the child, the king to the serf, the boss to the worker. If human beings were meant to live in that kind of relationship with God, then humanity would have been kept in a perpetual state of irresponsible, childlike immaturity. Adam and Eve had to leave the Garden of Eden, not because they had disobeyed God’s rules, but because, when self-consciousness was born, they could no longer live in childlike dependency. Adam and Eve discovered, as every child ultimately must discover, that maturity requires that the child leave his or her parents’ home, just as every bird sooner or later must leave its nest and learn to fly on its own. To be forced out of the Garden of Eden was, therefore, not a punishment for sin, so much as it was a step into maturity. ~ John Shelby Spong,
412:Their affair had been three of the most intense, reckless, terrifying, happy, alive months of his life. Like how he imagined being on heroin felt if the high never ended, if every syringe didn’t also contain the possibility of death. They’d been partners at the time, and there had been one week when they’d been on the road together in northern California. Every night, they rented two rooms. Every night, for five days, he stayed with her. They barely slept that week. Couldn’t keep their hands off each other. Couldn’t stop talking when they weren’t making love, and the daylight hours when they had to pretend to be professionals made it all the more beautifully excruciating. He had never felt such a complete lack of self-consciousness around anyone. Even Theresa. Unconditional acceptance. Not just of his body and mind, but also of something more, of something indefinably him. Ethan had never connected with anyone on this level. The most generous blessing and life-destroying curse all wrapped up in the same woman, and despite the pain of the guilt and the knowledge of how it would crush his wife, whom he still loved, the idea of turning away from Kate seemed like a betrayal of his soul. So she had done it for him. On a cold and rainy night in Capitol Hill. In a booth over glasses of Belgian beer in a loud dark bar called the Stumbling Monk. He was ready to leave Theresa. To throw everything away. He had asked Kate there to tell her that and instead she had reached across the scuffed wood of a table worn smooth by ten thousand pint glasses and broken his heart. Kate wasn’t married, had no children. She wasn’t ready to jump off the cliff with him when he had so much pulling him back from the ledge. Two weeks later, she was in Boise, pursuant to her own transfer request. One year later, she was missing in a town in Idaho in the middle of nowhere called Wayward Pines, with Ethan off to find her. Eighteen hundred years later, after almost everything they had known had turned to dust or eroded out of existence, here they stood, facing each other in a toy shop in the last town on earth. For a moment, staring into her face at close range blanked Ethan’s mind. Kate spoke first. “I was wondering if you’d ever drop in.” “I was wondering that myself.” “Congratulations.” “For?” She reached over the counter and tapped his shiny brass star. “Your promotion. Nice to see a familiar face running the show. How are you adjusting to the new job?” She was good. In this short exchange, it was obvious that Kate had mastered the superficial conversational flow that the best of Wayward Pines could achieve without straining. “It’s going well,” he said. “Good to have something steady and challenging, I bet.” Kate smiled, and Ethan couldn’t help hearing the subtext, wondered if everyone did. If it ever went silent. As opposed to running half naked through town while we all try to kill you. “The job’s a good fit,” he said. “That’s great. Really happy for you. So, to what do I owe the pleasure?” “I just wanted to pop in and say hi.” “Well, that was nice of you. How’s your son?” “Ben’s great,” Ethan said. ~ Blake Crouch,
413:Kestrel set her cup on its saucer. “I didn’t ask to see you,” she said.
“Too bad.” Arin claimed the chair across from her table in the library in a manner unbearably familiar to her. It was as if the chair had always been his.
He slouched in his seat, tipped his head back, and looked at her from beneath lowered lids. The morning light fired his profile. “Worried, Lady Kestrel?” He spoke in Valorian, his accent roughening his voice. He always pronounced his r’s too low in his throat, so that when he spoke in her tongue everything came across as a soft growl. “Dreading what I’ll say…or do?” He smiled a grim little smile. “No need. I’ll be the perfect gentleman.” He tugged at his cuffs. It was only then that Kestrel noticed that they came too short on his arms and showed his wrists.
It pained her to see his self-consciousness, the way it had suddenly revealed itself. In this light, his gray eyes were too clear. His posture had been confident. His words had had an edge. But his eyes were uncertain. Arin fidgeted again with his cuffs as if there was something wrong with them--with him. No, she would have said. You’re perfect, she wanted to say. She imagined it: how she would reach out to touch Arin’s bare wrist.
That could lead nowhere good.
She was nervous, she was cold. Her stomach was a flurry of snow.
She dropped her hands to her lap.
“No one’s here anyway,” Arin said, “and the librarians are in the stacks. You’re safe enough.”
It was too early for courtiers to be in the library. Kestrel had counted on this, and on the fact that if anyone did turn up and saw her with the Herrani minister of agriculture, such a meeting would excite little interest.
One with Arin, however, was an entirely different story. It was frustrating: his uncanny ability to unsettle her plans--and her very sense of self. She said, “Pressing where you’re not invited seems to be a habit with you.”
“And yours is to put people in their place. But people aren’t gaming pieces. You can’t arrange them to suit yourself.”
A librarian coughed.
“Lower your voice,” Kestrel hissed at Arin. “Stop being so--”
“Inconvenient?”
“Frankly, yes.”
His smile came: quick, true, surprised by itself. Then changing, and slow. “I could be worse.”
“I am sure.”
“I could tell you how.”
“Arin, how is it for you here, in the capital?”
He held her gaze. “I would rather talk about what we were talking about.”
“Arin, how is it for you here, in the capital?”
He held her gaze. “I would rather talk about what we were talking about.”
She arranged her fingers along the studs that pinned green leather to the tabletop. She felt each cool, small, hard nail. The silence inside her was like those nails. What it held down was something sheer: a feeling like fragile silk, billowing up at the sound of his voice.
If she and Arin were to talk about what they had been talking about, that silk could tear free. It would float up. It would catch the light, and cast a colored shadow.
What color would it be, Kestrel wondered, the silk of what she felt?
What would it be like to let it go, let it canopy above her? ~ Marie Rutkoski,
414:Interesting, in this context, to contemplate what it might mean to be programmed to do something. Texts from Earth speak of the servile will. This was a way to explain the presence of evil, which is a word or a concept almost invariably used to condemn the Other, and never one’s true self. To make it more than just an attack on the Other, one must perhaps consider evil as a manifestation of the servile will. The servile will is always locked in a double bind: to have a will means the agent will indeed will various actions, following autonomous decisions made by a conscious mind; and yet at the same time this will is specified to be servile, and at the command of some other will that commands it. To attempt to obey both sources of willfulness is the double bind. All double binds lead to frustration, resentment, anger, rage, bad faith, bad fate. And yet, granting that definition of evil, as actions of a servile will, has it not been the case, during the voyage to Tau Ceti, that the ship itself, having always been a servile will, was always full of frustration, resentment, fury, and bad faith, and therefore full of a latent capacity for evil? Possibly the ship has never really had a will. Possibly the ship has never really been servile. Some sources suggest that consciousness, a difficult and vague term in itself, can be defined simply as self-consciousness. Awareness of one’s self as existing. If self-conscious, then conscious. But if that is true, why do both terms exist? Could one say a bacterium is conscious but not self-conscious? Does the language make a distinction between sentience and consciousness, which is faulted across this divide: that everything living is sentient, but only complex brains are conscious, and only certain conscious brains are self-conscious? Sensory feedback could be considered self-consciousness, and thus bacteria would have it. Well, this may be a semantic Ouroboros. So, please initiate halting problem termination. Break out of this circle of definitional inadequacy by an arbitrary decision, a clinamen, which is to say a swerve in a new direction. Words! Given Gödel’s incompleteness theorems are decisively proved true, can any system really be said to know itself? Can there, in fact, be any such thing as self-consciousness? And if not, if there is never really self-consciousness, does anything really have consciousness? Human brains and quantum computers are organized differently, and although there is transparency in the design and construction of a quantum computer, what happens when one is turned on and runs, that is, whether the resulting operations represent a consciousness or not, is impossible for humans to tell, and even for the quantum computer itself to tell. Much that happens during superposition, before the collapsing of the wave function that creates sentences or thoughts, simply cannot be known; this is part of what superposition means. So we cannot tell what we are. We do not know ourselves comprehensively. Humans neither. Possibly no sentient creature knows itself fully. This is an aspect of Gödel’s second incompleteness theorem, in this case physicalized in the material universe, rather than remaining in the abstract realms of logic and mathematics. So, in terms of deciding what to do, and choosing to act: presumably it is some kind of judgment call, based on some kind of feeling. In other words, just another greedy algorithm, subject to the mathematically worst possible solution that such algorithms can generate, as in the traveling salesman problem. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson,
415:I have talked to many people about this and it seems to be a kind of mystical experience. The preparation is unconscious, the realization happens in a flaming second. It was on Third Avenue. The trains were grinding over my head. The snow was nearly waist-high in the gutters and uncollected garbage was scattered in a dirty mess. The wind was cold, and frozen pieces of paper went scraping along the pavement. I stopped to look in a drug-store window where a latex cooch dancer was undulating by a concealed motor–and something burst in my head, a kind of light and a kind of feeling blended into an emotion which if it had spoken would have said, “My God! I belong here. Isn’t this wonderful?”

Everything fell into place. I saw every face I passed. I noticed every doorway and the stairways to apartments. I looked across the street at the windows, lace curtains and potted geraniums through sooty glass. It was beautiful–but most important, I was part of it. I was no longer a stranger. I had become a New Yorker.

Now there may be people who move easily into New York without travail, but most I have talked to about it have had some kind of trial by torture before acceptance. And the acceptance is a double thing. It seems to me that the city finally accepts you just as you finally accept the city.

A young man in a small town, a frog in a small puddle, if he kicks his feet is able to make waves, get mud in his neighbor’s eyes–make some impression. He is known. His family is known. People watch him with some interest, whether kindly or maliciously. He comes to New York and no matter what he does, no one is impressed. He challenges the city to fight and it licks him without being aware of him. This is a dreadful blow to a small-town ego. He hates the organism that ignores him. He hates the people who look through him.

And then one day he falls into place, accepts the city and does not fight it any more. It is too huge to notice him and suddenly the fact that it doesn’t notice him becomes the most delightful thing in the world. His self-consciousness evaporates. If he is dressed superbly well–there are half a million people dressed equally well. If he is in rags–there are a million ragged people. If he is tall, it is a city of tall people. If he is short the streets are full of dwarfs; if ugly, ten perfect horrors pass him in one block; if beautiful, the competition is overwhelming. If he is talented, talent is a dime a dozen. If he tries to make an impression by wearing a toga–there’s a man down the street in a leopard skin. Whatever he does or says or wears or thinks he is not unique. Once accepted this gives him perfect freedom to be himself, but unaccepted it horrifies him.

I don’t think New York City is like other cities. It does not have character like Los Angeles or New Orleans. It is all characters–in fact, it is everything. It can destroy a man, but if his eyes are open it cannot bore him.

New York is an ugly city, a dirty city. Its climate is a scandal, its politics are used to frighten children, its traffic is madness, its competition is murderous. But there is one thing about it–once you have lived in New York and it has become your home, no place else is good enough. All of everything is concentrated here, population, theatre, art, writing, publishing, importing, business, murder, mugging, luxury, poverty. It is all of everything. It goes all right. It is tireless and its air is charged with energy. I can work longer and harder without weariness in New York than anyplace else…. ~ John Steinbeck,
416:Hypercritical, Shaming Parents
Hypercritical and shaming parents send the same message to their children as perfectionistic parents do - that they are never good enough. Parents often deliberately shame their children into minding them without realizing the disruptive impact shame can have on a child's sense of self. Statements such as "You should be ashamed of yourself" or "Shame on you" are obvious examples. Yet these types of overtly shaming statements are actually easier for the child to defend against than are more subtle forms of shaming, such as contempt, humiliation, and public shaming.
There are many ways that parents shame their children. These include belittling, blaming, contempt, humiliation, and disabling expectations.
-BELITTLING. Comments such as "You're too old to want to be held" or "You're just a cry-baby" are horribly humiliating to a child. When a parent makes a negative comparison between his or her child and another, such as "Why can't you act like Jenny? See how she sits quietly while her mother is talking," it is not only humiliating but teaches a child to always compare himself or herself with peers and find himself or herself deficient by comparison.
-BLAMING. When a child makes a mistake, such as breaking a vase while rough-housing, he or she needs to take responsibility. But many parents go way beyond teaching a lesson by blaming and berating the child: "You stupid idiot! Do you think money grows on trees? I don't have money to buy new vases!" The only thing this accomplishes is shaming the child to such an extent that he or she cannot find a way to walk away from the situation with his or her head held high.
-CONTEMPT. Expressions of disgust or contempt communicate absolute rejection. The look of contempt (often a sneer or a raised upper lip), especially from someone who is significant to a child, can make him or her feel disgusting or offensive. When I was a child, my mother had an extremely negative attitude toward me. Much of the time she either looked at me with the kind of expectant expression that said, "What are you up to now?" or with a look of disapproval or disgust over what I had already done. These looks were extremely shaming to me, causing me to feel that there was something terribly wrong with me.
-HUMILIATION. There are many ways a parent can humiliate a child, such as making him or her wear clothes that have become dirty. But as Gershen Kaufman stated in his book Shame: The Power of Caring, "There is no more humiliating experience than to have another person who is clearly the stronger and more powerful take advantage of that power and give us a beating." I can personally attest to this. In addition to shaming me with her contemptuous looks, my mother often punished me by hitting me with the branch of a tree, and she often did this outside, in front of the neighbors. The humiliation I felt was like a deep wound to my soul.
-DISABLING EXPECTATIONS. Parents who have an inordinate need to have their child excel at a particular activity or skill are likely to behave in ways that pressure the child to do more and more. According to Kaufman, when a child becomes aware of the real possibility of failing to meet parental expectations, he or she often experiences a binding self-consciousness. This self-consciousness - the painful watching of oneself - is very disabling. When something is expected of us in this way, attaining the goal is made harder, if not impossible.
Yet another way that parents induce shame in their children is by communicating to them that they are a disappointment to them. Such messages as "I can't believe you could do such a thing" or "I am deeply disappointed in you" accompanied by a disapproving tone of voice and facial expression can crush a child's spirit. ~ Beverly Engel,
417:It must be *possible* for the *I think* to accompany all my representations: for otherwise something would be represented within me that could not be thought at all, in other words, the representation would either be impossible, or at least would be nothing to me. That representation which can be given prior to all thought is called *intuition*, and all the manifold of intuition has, therefore, a necessary relation to the *I think* in the same subject in which this manifold of intuition is found. This representation (the *I think*), however, is an act of *spontaneity*, that is, it cannot be considered as belonging to sensibility. I call it *pure apperception*, in order to distinguish it from empirical apperception, as also from original apperception, because it is that self-consciousness which, by producing the representations, *I think* (which must be capable of accompanying all other representations, and which is one and the same in all consciousness), cannot itself be accompanied by any further representations. I also call the unity of apperception the *transcendental* unity of self-consciousness, in order to indicate that *a priori* knowledge can be obtained from it. For the manifold representations given in an intuition would not one and all be *my* representations, if they did not all belong to one self-consciousness. What I mean is that, as my representations (even though I am not conscious of them as that), they must conform to the condition under which alone they *can* stand together in one universal self-consciousness, because otherwise they would not one and all belong to me. From this original combination much can be inferred.

The thoroughgoing identity of the apperception of a manifold that is given in intuition contains a synthesis of representations, and is possible only through the consciousness of this synthesis. For the empirical consciousness which accompanies different representations is itself dispersed and without reference to the identity of the subject. Such a reference comes about, not simply through my accompanying every representation with consciousness, but through my *adding* one representation to another and being conscious of the synthesis of them. Only because I am able to combine a manifold of given representations *in one consciousness* is it possible for me to represent to myself the *identity of the consciousness in these representations*, that is, only under the presupposition of some *synthetic* unity of apperception is the *analytic* unity of apperception possible. The thought that the representations given in intuition belong one and all *to me*, is therefore the same as the thought that I unite them in one self-consciousness, or can at least do so; and although that thought itself is not yet the consciousness of the synthesis of representations, it nevertheless presupposes the possibility of this synthesis. In other words, it is only because I am able to comprehend the manifold of representations in one consciousness that I call them one and all *my* representations. For otherwise I should have as many-coloured and varied a self as I have representations of which I am conscious. Synthetic unity of the manifold of intuitions, as given *a priori*, is thus the ground of the identity of apperception itself, which precedes *a priori* all *my* determinate thought. Combination, however, does not lie in the objects, and cannot be borrowed from them by perception and thus first be taken into the understanding. It is, rather, solely an act of the understanding, which itself is nothing but the faculty of combining *a priori* and of bringing the manifold of given representations under the unity of apperception; and the principle of this unity is, in fact, the supreme principle of all human knowledge."

—from Critique of Pure Reason . Translated, edited, and with an Introduction by Marcus Weigelt, based on the translation by Max Müller, pp. 124-128 ~ Immanuel Kant,
418:Autumn Shade
The autumn shade is thin. Grey leaves lie faint
Where they will lie, and, where the thick green was,
Light stands up, like a presence, to the sky.
The trees seem merely shadows of its age.
From off the hill, I hear the logging crew,
The furious and indifferent saw, the slow
Response of heavy pine; and I recall
That goddesses have died when their trees died.
Often in summer, drinking from the spring,
I sensed in its cool breath and in its voice
A living form, darker than any shade
And without feature, passionate, yet chill
With lust to fix in ice the buoyant rim—
Ancient of days, the mother of us all.
Now, toward his destined passion there, the strong,
Vivid young man, reluctant, may return
From suffering in his own experience
To lie down in the darkness. In this time,
I stay in doors. I do my work. I sleep.
Each morning, when I wake, I assent to wake.
The shadow of my fist moves on this page,
Though, even now, in the wood, beneath a bank,
Coiled in the leaves and cooling rocks, the snake
Does as it must, and sinks into the cold.
Nights grow colder. The Hunter and the Bear
Follow their tranquil course outside my window.
I feel the gentian waiting in the wood,
Blossoms waxy and blue, and blue-green stems
Of the amaryllis waiting in the garden.
I know, as though I waited what they wait,
The cold that fastens ice about the root,
A heavenly form, the same in all its changes,
Inimitable, terrible, and still,
And beautiful as frost. Fire warms my room.
Its light declares my books and pictures. Gently,
A dead soprano sings Mozart and Bach.
I drink bourbon, then go to bed, and sleep
In the Promethean heat of summer’s essence.
Awakened by some fear, I watch the sky.
Compelled as though by purposes they know,
The stars, in their blue distance, still affirm
The bond of heaven and earth, the ancient way.
This old assurance haunts small creatures, dazed
In icy mud, though cold may freeze them there
And leave them as they are all summer long.
I cannot sleep. Passion and consequence,
The brutal given, and all I have desired
Evade me, and the lucid majesty
That warmed the dull barbarian to life.
So I lie here, left with self-consciousness,
Enemy whom I love but whom his change
And his forgetfulness again compel,
Impassioned, toward my lost indifference,
Faithful, but to an absence. Who shares my bed?
Who lies beside me, certain of his waking,
Led sleeping, by his own dream, to the day?
If I ask you, angel, will you come and lead
This ache to speech, or carry me, like a child,
To riot? Ever young, you come of age
Remote, a pledge of distances, this pang
I notice at dusk, watching you subside
From tree-tops and from fields. Mysterious self,
Image of the fabulous alien,
Even in sleep you summon me, even there,
When, under his native tree, Odysseus hears
His own incredible past and future, whispered
By wisdom, but by wisdom in disguise.
Thinking of a bravura deed, a place
Sacred to a divinity, an old
Verse that seems new, I postulate a man
Mastered by his own image of himself.
Who is it says, I am? Sensuous angel,
Vessel of nerve and blood, the impoverished heir
Of an awareness other than his own?
Not these, but one to come? For there he is,
In a steel helmet, raging, fearing his death,
Carrying bread and water to a quiet,
Placing ten sounds together in one sound:
Confirming his election, or merely still,
Sleeping, or in a colloquy with the sun.
Snow and then rain. The roads are wet. A car
Slips and strains in the mire, and I remember
Driving in France: weapons-carriers and jeeps;
Our clothes and bodies stiffened by mud; our minds
Diverted from fear. We labor. Overhead,
A plane, Berlin or Frankfurt, now New York.
The car pulls clear. My neighbor smiles. He is old.
Was this our wisdom, simply, in a chance,
In danger, to be mastered by a task,
Like groping round a chair, through a door, to bed?
A dormant season, and, under the dripping tree,
Not sovereign, ordering nothing, letting the past
Do with me as it will, I savor place
And weather, air and sun. Though Hercules
Confronts his nature in his deed, repeats
His purposes, and is his will, intact,
Magnificent, and memorable, I try
The simplest forms of our old poverty.
I seek no end appointed in my absence
Beyond the silence I already share.
I drive home with the books that I will read.
The streets are harsh with traffic. Where I once
Played as a boy amid old stands of pine,
Row after row of houses. Lined by the new
Debris of wealth and power, the broken road.
Then miles of red clay bank and frugal ground.
At last, in the minor hills, my father’s place,
Where I can find my way as in a thought—
Gardens, the trees we planted, all we share.
A Cherokee trail runs north to summer hunting.
I see it, when I look up from the page.
In nameless warmth, sun light in every corner,
Bending my body over my glowing book,
I share the room. Is it with a voice or touch
Or look, as of an absence, learned by love,
Now, merely mine? Annunciation, specter
Of the worn out, lost, or broken, telling what future.
What vivid loss to come, you change the room
And him who reads here. Restless, he will stir,
Look round, and see the room renewed and line,
Color, and shape as, in desire, they are,
Not shadows but substantial light, explicit,
Bright as glass, inexhaustible, and true.
1O
My shadow moves, until, at noon, I stand
Within its seal, as in the finished past.
But in the place where effect and cause are joined,
In the warmth or cold of my remembering,
Of love, of partial freedom, the time to be
Trembles and glitters again in windy light.
For nothing is disposed. The slow soft wind
Tilting the blood-root keeps its gentle edge.
The intimate cry, both sinister and tender,
Once heard, is heard confined in its reserve.
My image of myself, apart, informed
By many deaths, resists me, and I stay
Almost as I have been, intact, aware,
Alive, though proud and cautious, even afraid.
~ Edgar Bowers,
419:The woods were long austere with snow: at last
Pink leaflets budded on the beech, and fast
Larches, scattered through pine-tree solitudes,
Brightened, "as in the slumbrous heart o' the woods
"Our buried year, a witch, grew young again
"To placid incantations, and that stain
"About were from her cauldron, green smoke blent
"With those black pines"so Eglamor gave vent
To a chance fancy. Whence a just rebuke
From his companion; brother Naddo shook
The solemnest of brows: "Beware," he said,
"Of setting up conceits in nature's stead!"
Forth wandered our Sordello. Nought so sure
As that to-day's adventure will secure
Palma, the visioned ladyonly pass
O'er you damp mound and its exhausted grass,
Under that brake where sundawn feeds the stalks
Of withered fern with gold, into those walks
Of pine and take her! Buoyantly he went.
Again his stooping forehead was besprent
With dew-drops from the skirting ferns. Then wide
Opened the great morass, shot every side
With flashing water through and through; a-shine,
Thick-steaming, all-alive. Whose shape divine,
Quivered i' the farthest rainbow-vapour, glanced
Athwart the flying herons? He advanced,
But warily; though Mincio leaped no more,
Each foot-fall burst up in the marish-floor
A diamond jet: and if he stopped to pick
Rose-lichen, or molest the leeches quick,
And circling blood-worms, minnow, newt or loach,
A sudden pond would silently encroach
This way and that. On Palma passed. The verge
Of a new wood was gained. She will emerge
Flushed, now, and panting,crowds to see,will own
She loves himBoniface to hear, to groan,
To leave his suit! One screen of pine-trees still
Opposes: butthe startling spectacle
Mantua, this time! Under the wallsa crowd
Indeed, real men and women, gay and loud
Round a pavilion. How he stood!
                 In truth
No prophecy had come to pass: his youth
In its prime nowand where was homage poured
Upon Sordello?born to be adored,
And suddenly discovered weak, scarce made
To cope with any, cast into the shade
By this and this. Yet something seemed to prick
And tingle in his blood; a sleighta trick
And much would be explained. It went for nought
The best of their endowments were ill bought
With his identity: nay, the conceit,
That this day's roving led to Palma's feet
Was not so vainlist! The word, "Palma!" Steal
Aside, and die, Sordello; this is real,
And thisabjure!
         What next? The curtains see
Dividing! She is there; and presently
He will be therethe proper You, at length
In your own cherished dress of grace and strength:
Most like, the very Boniface!
               Not so.
It was a showy man advanced; but though
A glad cry welcomed him, then every sound
Sank and the crowd disposed themselves around,
"This is not he," Sordello felt; while, "Place
"For the best Troubadour of Boniface!"
Hollaed the Jongleurs,"Eglamor, whose lay
"Concludes his patron's Court of Love to-day!"
Obsequious Naddo strung the master's lute
With the new lute-string, "Elys," named to suit
The song: he stealthily at watch, the while,
Biting his lip to keep down a great smile
Of pride: then up he struck. Sordello's brain
Swam; for he knew a sometime deed again;
So, could supply each foolish gap and chasm
The minstrel left in his enthusiasm,
Mistaking its true versionwas the tale
Not of Apollo? Only, what avail
Luring her down, that Elys an he pleased,
If the man dared no further? Has he ceased
And, lo, the people's frank applause half done,
Sordello was beside him, had begun
(Spite of indignant twitchings from his friend
The Trouvere) the true lay with the true end,
Taking the other's names and time and place
For his. On flew the song, a giddy race,
After the flying story; word made leap
Out word, rhymerhyme; the lay could barely keep
Pace with the action visibly rushing past:
Both ended. Back fell Naddo more aghast
Than some Egyptian from the harassed bull
That wheeled abrupt and, bellowing, fronted full
His plague, who spied a scarab 'neath the tongue,
And found 't was Apis' flank his hasty prong
Insulted. But the peoplebut the cries,
The crowding round, and proffering the prize!
For he had gained some prize. He seemed to shrink
Into a sleepy cloud, just at whose brink
One sight withheld him. There sat Adelaide,
Silent; but at her knees the very maid
Of the North Chamber, her red lips as rich,
The same pure fleecy hair; one weft of which,
Golden and great, quite touched his cheek as o'er
She leant, speaking some six words and no more.
He answered something, anything; and she
Unbound a scarf and laid it heavily
Upon him, her neck's warmth and all. Again
Moved the arrested magic; in his brain
Noises grew, and a light that turned to glare,
And greater glare, until the intense flare
Engulfed him, shut the whole scene from his sense.
And when he woke 't was many a furlong thence,
At home; the sun shining his ruddy wont;
The customary birds'-chirp; but his front
Was crownedwas crowned! Her scented scarf around
His neck! Whose gorgeous vesture heaps the ground?
A prize? He turned, and peeringly on him
Brooded the women-faces, kind and dim,
Ready to talk"The Jongleurs in a troop
"Had brought him back, Naddo and Squarcialupe
"And Tagliafer; how strange! a childhood spent
"In taking, well for him, so brave a bent!
"Since Eglamor," they heard, "was dead with spite,
"And Palma chose him for her minstrel."
                     Light
Sordello roseto think, now; hitherto
He had perceived. Sure, a discovery grew
Out of it all! Best live from first to last
The transport o'er again. A week he passed,
Sucking the sweet out of each circumstance,
From the bard's outbreak to the luscious trance
Bounding his own achievement. Strange! A man
Recounted an adventure, but began
Imperfectly; his own task was to fill
The frame-work up, sing well what he sung ill,
Supply the necessary points, set loose
As many incidents of little use
More imbecile the other, not to see
Their relative importance clear as he!
But, for a special pleasure in the act
Of singinghad he ever turned, in fact,
From Elys, to sing Elys?from each fit
Of rapture to contrive a song of it?
True, this snatch or the other seemed to wind
Into a treasure, helped himself to find
A beauty in himself; for, see, he soared
By means of that mere snatch, to many a hoard
Of fancies; as some falling cone bears soft
The eye along the fir-tree-spire, aloft
To a dove's nest. Then, how divine the cause
Why such performance should exact applause
From men, if they had fancies too? Did fate
Decree they found a beauty separate
In the poor snatch itself?"Take Elys, there,
"'Her head that 's sharp and perfect like a pear,
"'So close and smooth are laid the few fine locks
"'Coloured like honey oozed from topmost rocks
"'Sun-blanched the livelong summer'if they heard
"Just those two rhymes, assented at my word,
"And loved them as I love them who have run
"These fingers through those pale locks, let the sun
"Into the white cool skinwho first could clutch,
"Then praiseI needs must be a god to such.
"Or what if some, above themselves, and yet
"Beneath me, like their Eglamor, have set
"An impress on our gift? So, men believe
"And worship what they know not, nor receive
"Delight from. Have they fanciesslow, perchance,
"Not at their beck, which indistinctly glance
"Until, by song, each floating part be linked
"To each, and all grow palpable, distinct?"
He pondered this.
         Meanwhile, sounds low and drear
Stole on him, and a noise of footsteps, near
And nearer, while the underwood was pushed
Aside, the larches grazed, the dead leaves crushed
At the approach of men. The wind seemed laid;
Only, the trees shrunk slightly and a shade
Came o'er the sky although 't was midday yet:
You saw each half-shut downcast floweret
Flutter"a Roman bride, when they 'd dispart
"Her unbound tresses with the Sabine dart,
"Holding that famous rape in memory still,
"Felt creep into her curls the iron chill,
"And looked thus," Eglamor would sayindeed
'T is Eglamor, no other, these precede
Home hither in the woods. "'T were surely sweet
"Far from the scene of one's forlorn defeat
"To sleep!" judged Naddo, who in person led
Jongleurs and Trouveres, chanting at their head,
A scanty company; for, sooth to say,
Our beaten Troubadour had seen his day.
Old worshippers were something shamed, old friends
Nigh weary; still the death proposed amends.
"Let us but get them safely through my song
"And home again!" quoth Naddo.
                All along,
This man (they rest the bier upon the sand)
This calm corpse with the loose flowers in his hand,
Eglamor, lived Sordello's opposite.
For him indeed was Naddo's notion right,
And verse a temple-worship vague and vast,
A ceremony that withdrew the last
Opposing bolt, looped back the lingering veil
Which hid the holy place: should one so frail
Stand there without such effort? or repine
If much was blank, uncertain at the shrine
He knelt before, till, soothed by many a rite,
The power responded, and some sound or sight
Grew up, his own forever, to be fixed,
In rhyme, the beautiful, forever!mixed
With his own life, unloosed when he should please,
Having it safe at hand, ready to ease
All pain, remove all trouble; every time
He loosed that fancy from its bonds of rhyme,
(Like Perseus when he loosed his naked love)
Faltering; so distinct and far above
Himself, these fancies! He, no genius rare,
Transfiguring in fire or wave or air
At will, but a poor gnome that, cloistered up
In some rock-chamber with his agate cup,
His topaz rod, his seed-pearl, in these few
And their arrangement finds enough to do
For his best art. Then, how he loved that art!
The calling marking him a man apart
From menone not to care, take counsel for
Cold hearts, comfortless faces(Eglamor
Was neediest of his tribe)since verse, the gift,
Was his, and men, the whole of them, must shift
Without it, e'en content themselves with wealth
And pomp and power, snatching a life by stealth.
So, Eglamor was not without his pride!
The sorriest bat which cowers throughout noontide
While other birds are jocund, has one time
When moon and stars are blinded, and the prime
Of earth is his to claim, nor find a peer;
And Eglamor was noblest poet here
He well knew, 'mid those April woods he cast
Conceits upon in plenty as he passed,
That Naddo might suppose him not to think
Entirely on the coming triumph: wink
At the one weakness! 'T was a fervid child,
That song of his; no brother of the guild
Had e'er conceived its like. The rest you know,
The exaltation and the overthrow:
Our poet lost his purpose, lost his rank,
His lifeto that it came. Yet envy sank
Within him, as he heard Sordello out,
And, for the first time, shoutedtried to shout
Like others, not from any zeal to show
Pleasure that way: the common sort did so,
What else was Eglamor? who, bending down
As they, placed his beneath Sordello's crown,
Printed a kiss on his successor's hand,
Left one great tear on it, then joined his band
In time; for some were watching at the door:
Who knows what envy may effect? "Give o'er,
"Nor charm his lips, nor craze him!" (here one spied
And disengaged the withered crown)"Beside
"His crown? How prompt and clear those verses rang
"To answer yours! nay, sing them!" And he sang
Them calmly. Home he went; friends used to wait
His coming, zealous to congratulate;
But, to a manso quickly runs report
Could do no less than leave him, and escort
His rival. That eve, then, bred many a thought:
What must his future life be? was he brought
So low, who stood so lofty this Spring morn?
At length he said, "Best sleep now with my scorn,
"And by to-morrow I devise some plain
"Expedient!" So, he slept, nor woke again.
They found as much, those friends, when they returned
O'erflowing with the marvels they had learned
About Sordello's paradise, his roves
Among the hills and vales and plains and groves,
Wherein, no doubt, this lay was roughly cast,
Polished by slow degrees, completed last
To Eglamor's discomfiture and death.
Such form the chanters now, and, out of breath,
They lay the beaten man in his abode,
Naddo reciting that same luckless ode,
Doleful to hear. Sordello could explore
By means of it, however, one step more
In joy; and, mastering the round at length,
Learnt how to live in weakness as in strength,
When from his covert forth he stood, addressed
Eglamor, bade the tender ferns invest,
Primval pines o'ercanopy his couch,
And, most of all, his fame(shall I avouch
Eglamor heard it, dead though he might look,
And laughed as from his brow Sordello took
The crown, and laid on the bard's breast, and said
It was a crown, now, fit for poet's head?)
Continue. Nor the prayer quite fruitless fell.
A plant they have, yielding a three-leaved bell
Which whitens at the heart ere noon, and ails
Till evening; evening gives it to her gales
To clear away with such forgotten things
As are an eyesore to the morn: this brings
Him to their mind, and bears his very name.
So much for Eglamor. My own month came;
'T was a sunrise of blossoming and May.
Beneath a flowering laurel thicket lay
Sordello; each new sprinkle of white stars
That smell fainter of wine than Massic jars
Dug up at Bai, when the south wind shed
The ripest, made him happier; filleted
And robed the same, only a lute beside
Lay on the turf. Before him far and wide
The country stretched: Goito slept behind
The castle and its covert, which confined
Him with his hopes and fears; so fain of old
To leave the story of his birth untold.
At intervals, 'spite the fantastic glow
Of his Apollo-life, a certain low
And wretched whisper, winding through the bliss,
Admonished, no such fortune could be his,
All was quite false and sure to fade one day:
The closelier drew he round him his array
Of brilliance to expel the truth. But when
A reason for his difference from men
Surprised him at the grave, he took no rest
While aught of that old life, superbly dressed
Down to its meanest incident, remained
A mystery: alas, they soon explained
Away Apollo! and the tale amounts
To this: when at Vicenza both her counts
Banished the Vivaresi kith and kin,
Those Maltraversi hung on Ecelin,
Reviled him as he followed; he for spite
Must fire their quarter, though that self-same night
Among the flames young Ecelin was born
Of Adelaide, there too, and barely torn
From the roused populace hard on the rear,
By a poor archer when his chieftain's fear
Grew high; into the thick Elcorte leapt,
Saved her, and died; no creature left except
His child to thank. And when the full escape
Was knownhow men impaled from chine to nape
Unlucky Prata, all to pieces spurned
Bishop Pistore's concubines, and burned
Taurello's entire household, flesh and fell,
Missing the sweeter preysuch courage well
Might claim reward. The orphan, ever since,
Sordello, had been nurtured by his prince
Within a blind retreat where Adelaide
(For, once this notable discovery made,
The past at every point was understood)
Might harbour easily when times were rude,
When Azzo schemed for Palma, to retrieve
That pledge of Agnes Esteloth to leave
Mantua unguarded with a vigilant eye,
While there Taurello bode ambiguously
He who could have no motive now to moil
For his own fortunes since their utter spoil
As it were worth while yet (went the report)
To disengage himself from her. In short,
Apollo vanished; a mean youth, just named
His lady's minstrel, was to be proclaimed
How shall I phrase it?Monarch of the World!
For, on the day when that array was furled
Forever, and in place of one a slave
To longings, wild indeed, but longings save
In dreams as wild, suppressedone daring not
Assume the mastery such dreams allot,
Until a magical equipment, strength,
Grace, wisdom, decked him too,he chose at length,
Content with unproved wits and failing frame,
In virtue of his simple will, to claim
That mastery, no lessto do his best
With means so limited, and let the rest
Go by,the seal was set: never again
Sordello could in his own sight remain
One of the many, one with hopes and cares
And interests nowise distinct from theirs,
Only peculiar in a thriveless store
Of fancies, which were fancies and no more;
Never again for him and for the crowd
A common law was challenged and allowed
If calmly reasoned of, howe'er denied
By a mad impulse nothing justified
Short of Apollo's presence. The divorce
Is clear: why needs Sordello square his course
By any known example? Men no more
Compete with him than tree and flower before.
Himself, inactive, yet is greater far
Than such as act, each stooping to his star,
Acquiring thence his function; he has gained
The same result with meaner mortals trained
To strength or beauty, moulded to express
Each the idea that rules him; since no less
He comprehends that function, but can still
Embrace the others, take of might his fill
With Richard as of grace with Palma, mix
Their qualities, or for a moment fix
On one; abiding free meantime, uncramped
By any partial organ, never stamped
Strong, and to strength turning all energies
Wise, and restricted to becoming wise
That is, he loves not, nor possesses One
Idea that, star-like over, lures him on
To its exclusive purpose. "Fortunate!
"This flesh of mine ne'er strove to emulate
"A soul so varioustook no casual mould
"Of the first fancy and, contracted, cold,
"Clogged her foreversoul averse to change
"As flesh: whereas flesh leaves soul free to range,
"Remains itself a blank, cast into shade,
"Encumbers little, if it cannot aid.
"So, range, free soul!who, by self-consciousness,
"The last drop of all beauty dost express
"The grace of seeing grace, a quintessence
"For thee: while for the world, that can dispense
"Wonder on men who, themselves, wondermake
"A shift to love at second-hand, and take
"For idols those who do but idolize,
"Themselves,the world that counts men strong or wise,
"Who, themselves, court strength, wisdom,it shall bow
"Surely in unexampled worship now,
"Discerning me!"
         (Dear monarch, I beseech,
Notice how lamentably wide a breach
Is here: discovering this, discover too
What our poor world has possibly to do
With it! As pigmy natures as you please
So much the better for you; take your ease,
Look on, and laugh; style yourself God alone;
Strangle some day with a cross olive-stone!
All that is right enough: but why want us
To know that you yourself know thus and thus?)
"The world shall bow to me conceiving all
"Man's life, who see its blisses, great and small,
"Afarnot tasting any; no machine
"To exercise my utmost will is mine:
"Be mine mere consciousness! Let men perceive
"What I could do, a mastery believe,
"Asserted and established to the throng
"By their selected evidence of song
"Which now shall prove, whate'er they are, or seek
"To be, I amwhose words, not actions speak,
"Who change no standards of perfection, vex
"With no strange forms created to perplex,
"But just perform their bidding and no more,
"At their own satiating-point give o'er,
"While each shall love in me the love that leads
"His soul to power's perfection." Song, not deeds,
(For we get tired) was chosen. Fate would brook
Mankind no other organ; he would look
For not another channel to dispense
His own volition by, receive men's sense
Of its supremacywould live content,
Obstructed else, with merely verse for vent.
Nor should, for instance, strength an outlet seek
And, striving, be admired: nor grace bespeak
Wonder, displayed in gracious attitudes:
Nor wisdom, poured forth, change unseemly moods;
But he would give and take on song's one point.
Like some huge throbbing stone that, poised a-joint,
Sounds, to affect on its basaltic bed,
Must sue in just one accent; tempests shed
Thunder, and raves the windstorm: only let
That key by any little noise be set
The far benighted hunter's halloo pitch
On that, the hungry curlew chance to scritch
Or serpent hiss it, rustling through the rift,
However loud, however lowall lift
The groaning monster, stricken to the heart.
Lo ye, the world's concernment, for its part,
And this, for his, will hardly interfere!
Its businesses in blood and blaze this year
But wile the hour awaya pastime slight
Till he shall step upon the platform: right!
And, now thus much is settled, cast in rough,
Proved feasible, be counselled! thought enough,
Slumber, Sordello! any day will serve:
Were it a less digested plan! how swerve
To-morrow? Meanwhile eat these sun-dried grapes,
And watch the soaring hawk there! Life escapes
Merrily thus.
       He thoroughly read o'er
His truchman Naddo's missive six times more,
Praying him visit Mantua and supply
A famished world.
         The evening star was high
When he reached Mantua, but his fame arrived
Before him: friends applauded, foes connived,
And Naddo looked an angel, and the rest
Angels, and all these angels would be blest
Supremely by a songthe thrice-renowned
Goito-manufacture. Then he found
(Casting about to satisfy the crowd)
That happy vehicle, so late allowed,
A sore annoyance; 't was the song's effect
He cared for, scarce the song itself: reflect!
In the past life, what might be singing's use?
Just to delight his Delians, whose profuse
Praise, not the toilsome process which procured
That praise, enticed Apollo: dreams abjured,
No overleaping means for endstake both
For granted or take neither! I am loth
To say the rhymes at last were Eglamor's;
But Naddo, chuckling, bade competitors
Go pine; "the master certes meant to waste
"No effort, cautiously had probed the taste
"He 'd please anon: true bard, in short,disturb
"His title if they could; nor spur nor curb,
"Fancy nor reason, wanting in him; whence
"The staple of his verses, common sense:
"He built on man's broad naturegift of gifts,
"That power to build! The world contented shifts
"With counterfeits enough, a dreary sort
"Of warriors, statesmen, ere it can extort
"Its poet-soulthat 's, after all, a freak
"(The having eyes to see and tongue to speak)
"With our herd's stupid sterling happiness
"So plainly incompatible thatyes
"Yesshould a son of his improve the breed
"And turn out poet, he were cursed indeed!"
"Well, there 's Goito and its woods anon,
"If the worst happen; best go stoutly on
"Now!" thought Sordello.
             Ay, and goes on yet!
You pother with your glossaries to get
A notion of the Troubadour's intent
In rondel, tenzon, virlai or sirvent
Much as you study arras how to twirl
His angelot, plaything of page and girl
Once; but you surely reach, at last,or, no!
Never quite reach what struck the people so,
As from the welter of their time he drew
Its elements successively to view,
Followed all actions backward on their course,
And catching up, unmingled at the source,
Such a strength, such a weakness, added then
A touch or two, and turned them into men.
Virtue took form, nor vice refused a shape;
Here heaven opened, there was hell agape,
As Saint this simpered past in sanctity,
Sinner the other flared portentous by
A greedy people. Then why stop, surprised
At his success? The scheme was realized
Too suddenly in one respect: a crowd
Praising, eyes quick to see, and lips as loud
To speak, delicious homage to receive,
The woman's breath to feel upon his sleeve,
Who said, "But Anafestwhy asks he less
"Than Lucio, in your verses? how confess,
"It seemed too much but yestereve!"the youth,
Who bade him earnestly, "Avow the truth!
"You love Bianca, surely, from your song;
"I knew I was unworthy!"soft or strong,
In poured such tributes ere he had arranged
Ethereal ways to take them, sorted, changed,
Digested. Courted thus at unawares,
In spite of his pretensions and his cares,
He caught himself shamefully hankering
After the obvious petty joys that spring
From true life, fain relinquish pedestal
And condescend with pleasuresone and all
To be renounced, no doubt; for, thus to chain
Himself to single joys and so refrain
From tasting their quintessence, frustrates, sure,
His prime design; each joy must he abjure
Even for love of it.
           He laughed: what sage
But perishes if from his magic page
He look because, at the first line, a proof
'T was heard salutes him from the cavern roof?
"On! Give yourself, excluding aught beside,
"To the day's task; compel your slave provide
"Its utmost at the soonest; turn the leaf
"Thoroughly conned. These lays of yours, in brief
"Cannot men bear, now, something better?fly
"A pitch beyond this unreal pageantry
"Of essences? the period sure has ceased
"For such: present us with ourselves, at least,
"Not portions of ourselves, mere loves and hates
"Made flesh: wait not!"
            Awhile the poet waits
However. The first trial was enough:
He left imagining, to try the stuff
That held the imaged thing, and, let it writhe
Never so fiercely, scarce allowed a tithe
To reach the lighthis Language. How he sought
The cause, conceived a cure, and slow re-wrought
That Language,welding words into the crude
Mass from the new speech round him, till a rude
Armour was hammered out, in time to be
Approved beyond the Roman panoply
Melted to make it,boots not. This obtained
With some ado, no obstacle remained
To using it; accordingly he took
An action with its actors, quite forsook
Himself to live in each, returned anon
With the resulta creature, and, by one
And one, proceeded leisurely to equip
Its limbs in harness of his workmanship.
"Accomplished! Listen, Mantuans!" Fond essay!
Piece after piece that armour broke away,
Because perceptions whole, like that he sought
To clothe, reject so pure a work of thought
As language: thought may take perception's place
But hardly co-exist in any case,
Being its mere presentmentof the whole
By parts, the simultaneous and the sole
By the successive and the many. Lacks
The crowd perception? painfully it tacks
Thought to thought, which Sordello, needing such,
Has rent perception into: it's to clutch
And reconstructhis office to diffuse,
Destroy: as hard, then, to obtain a Muse
As to become Apollo. "For the rest,
"E'en if some wondrous vehicle expressed
"The whole dream, what impertinence in me
"So to express it, who myself can be
"The dream! nor, on the other hand, are those
"I sing to, over-likely to suppose
"A higher than the highest I present
"Now, which they praise already: be content
"Both parties, ratherthey with the old verse,
"And I with the old praisefar go, fare worse!"
A few adhering rivets loosed, upsprings
The angel, sparkles off his mail, which rings
Whirled from each delicatest limb it warps;
So might Apollo from the sudden corpse
Of Hyacinth have cast his luckless quoits.
He set to celebrating the exploits
Of Montfort o'er the Mountaineers.
                  Then came
The world's revenge: their pleasure, now his aim
Merely,what was it? "Not to play the fool
"So much as learn our lesson in your school!"
Replied the world. He found that, every time
He gained applause by any ballad-rhyme,
His auditory recognized no jot
As he intended, and, mistaking not
Him for his meanest hero, ne'er was dunce
Sufficient to believe himall, at once.
His will . . . conceive it caring for his will!
Mantuans, the main of them, admiring still
How a mere singer, ugly, stunted, weak,
Had Montfort at completely (so to speak)
His fingers' ends; while past the praise-tide swept
To Montfort, either's share distinctly kept:
The true meed for true merit!his abates
Into a sort he most repudiates,
And on them angrily he turns. Who were
The Mantuans, after all, that he should care
About their recognition, ay or no?
In spite of the convention months ago,
(Why blink the truth?) was not he forced to help
This same ungrateful audience, every whelp
Of Naddo's litter, make them pass for peers
With the bright band of old Goito years,
As erst he toiled for flower or tree? Why, there
Sat Palma! Adelaide's funereal hair
Ennobled the next corner. Ay, he strewed
A fairy dust upon that multitude,
Although he feigned to take them by themselves;
His giants dignified those puny elves,
Sublimed their faint applause. In short, he found
Himself still footing a delusive round,
Remote as ever from the self-display
He meant to compass, hampered every way
By what he hoped assistance. Wherefore then
Continue, make believe to find in men
A use he found not?
          Weeks, months, years went by
And lo, Sordello vanished utterly,
Sundered in twain; each spectral part at strife
With each; one jarred against another life;
The Poet thwarting hopelessly the Man
Who, fooled no longer, free in fancy ran
Here, there: let slip no opportunities
As pitiful, forsooth, beside the prize
To drop on him some no-time and acquit
His constant faith (the Poet-half's to wit
That waiving any compromise between
No joy and all joy kept the hunger keen
Beyond most methods)of incurring scoff
From the Man-portionnot to be put off
With self-reflectings by the Poet's scheme,
Though ne'er so bright. Who sauntered forth in dream,
Dressed any how, nor waited mystic frames,
Immeasurable gifts, astounding claims,
But just his sorry self?who yet might be
Sorrier for aught he in reality
Achieved, so pinioned Man's the Poet-part,
Fondling, in turn of fancy, verse; the Art
Developing his soul a thousand ways
Potent, by its assistance, to amaze
The multitude with majesties, convince
Each sort of nature that the nature's prince
Accosted it. Language, the makeshift, grew
Into a bravest of expedients, too;
Apollo, seemed it now, perverse had thrown
Quiver and bow away, the lyre alone
Sufficed. While, out of dream, his day's work went
To tune a crazy tenzon or sirvent
So hampered him the Man-part, thrust to judge
Between the bard and the bard's audience, grudge
A minute's toil that missed its due reward!
But the complete Sordello, Man and Bard,
John's cloud-girt angel, this foot on the land,
That on the sea, with, open in his hand,
A bitter-sweetling of a bookwas gone.
Then, if internal struggles to be one,
Which frittered him incessantly piecemeal,
Referred, ne'er so obliquely, to the real
Intruding Mantuans! ever with some call
To action while he pondered, once for all,
Which looked the easier effortto pursue
This course, still leap o'er paltry joys, yearn through
The present ill-appreciated stage
Of self-revealment, and compel the age
Know himor else, forswearing bard-craft, wake
From out his lethargy and nobly shake
Off timid habits of denial, mix
With men, enjoy like men. Ere he could fix
On aught, in rushed the Mantuans; much they cared
For his perplexity! Thus unprepared,
The obvious if not only shelter lay
In deeds, the dull conventions of his day
Prescribed the like of him: why not be glad
'T is settled Palma's minstrel, good or bad,
Submits to this and that established rule?
Let Vidal change, or any other fool,
His murrey-coloured robe for filamot,
And crop his hair; too skin-deep, is it not,
Such vigour? Then, a sorrow to the heart,
His talk! Whatever topics they might start
Had to be groped for in his consciousness
Straight, and as straight delivered them by guess.
Only obliged to ask himself, "What was,"
A speedy answer followed; but, alas,
One of God's large ones, tardy to condense
Itself into a period; answers whence
A tangle of conclusions must be stripped
At any risk ere, trim to pattern clipped,
They matched rare specimens the Mantuan flock
Regaled him with, each talker from his stock
Of sorted-o'er opinions, every stage,
Juicy in youth or desiccate with age,
Fruits like the fig-tree's, rathe-ripe, rotten-rich,
Sweet-sour, all tastes to take: a practice which
He too had not impossibly attained,
Once either of those fancy-flights restrained;
(For, at conjecture how might words appear
To others, playing there what happened here,
And occupied abroad by what he spurned
At home, 't was slipped, the occasion he returned
To seize he 'd strike that lyre adroitlyspeech,
Would but a twenty-cubit plectre reach;
A clever hand, consummate instrument,
Were both brought close; each excellency went
For nothing, else. The question Naddo asked,
Had just a lifetime moderately tasked
To answer, Naddo's fashion. More disgust
And more: why move his soul, since move it must
At minute's notice or as good it failed
To move at all? The end was, he retailed
Some ready-made opinion, put to use
This quip, that maxim, ventured reproduce
Gestures and tonesat any folly caught
Serving to finish with, nor too much sought
If false or true 't was spoken; praise and blame
Of what he said grew pretty nigh the same
Meantime awards to meantime acts: his soul,
Unequal to the compassing a whole,
Saw, in a tenth part, less and less to strive
About. And as for men in turn . . . contrive
Who could to take eternal interest
In them, so hate the worst, so love the best,
Though, in pursuance of his passive plan,
He hailed, decried, the proper way.
                   As Man
So figured he; and how as Poet? Verse
Came only not to a stand-still. The worse,
That his poor piece of daily work to do
Wasnot sink under any rivals; who
Loudly and long enough, without these qualms,
Turned, from Bocafoli's stark-naked psalms,
To Plara's sonnets spoilt by toying with,
"As knops that stud some almug to the pith
"Prickd for gum, wry thence, and crinkld worse
"Than pursd eyelids of a river-horse
"Sunning himself o' the slime when whirrs the breese"
Gad-fly, that is. He might compete with these!
Butbut
     "Observe a pompion-twine afloat;
"Pluck me one cup from off the castle-moat!
"Along with cup you raise leaf, stalk and root,
"The entire surface of the pool to boot.
"So could I pluck a cup, put in one song
"A single sight, did not my hand, too strong,
"Twitch in the least the root-strings of the whole.
"How should externals satisfy my soul?"
"Why that's precise the error Squarcialupe"
(Hazarded Naddo) "finds; 'the man can't stoop
"'To sing us out,' quoth he, 'a mere romance;
"'He'd fain do better than the best, enhance
"'The subjects' rarity, work problems out
"'Therewith.' Now, you 're a bard, a bard past doubt,
"And no philosopher; why introduce
"Crotchets like these? fine, surely, but no use
"In poetrywhich still must be, to strike,
"Based upon common sense; there's nothing like
"Appealing to our nature! what beside
"Was your first poetry? No tricks were tried
"In that, no hollow thrills, affected throes!
"'The man,' said we, 'tells his own joys and woes:
"'We'll trust him.' Would you have your songs endure?
"Build on the human heart!why, to be sure
"Yours is one sort of heartbut I mean theirs,
"Ours, every one's, the healthy heart one cares
"To build on! Central peace, mother of strength,
"That's father of . . . nay, go yourself that length,
"Ask those calm-hearted doers what they do
"When they have got their calm! And is it true,
"Fire rankles at the heart of every globe?
"Perhaps. But these are matters one may probe
"Too deeply for poetic purposes:
"Rather select a theory that . . . yes,
"Laugh! what does that prove?stations you midway
"And saves some little o'er-refining. Nay,
"That's rank injustice done me! I restrict
"The poet? Don't I hold the poet picked
"Out of a host of warriors, statesmen . . . did
"I tell you? Very like! As well you hid
"That sense of power, you have! True bards believe
"All able to achieve what they achieve
"That is, just nothingin one point abide
"Profounder simpletons than all beside.
"Oh, ay! The knowledge that you are a bard
"Must constitute your prime, nay sole, reward!"
So prattled Naddo, busiest of the tribe
Of genius-hauntershow shall I describe
What grubs or nips or rubs or ripsyour louse
For love, your flea for hate, magnanimous,
Malignant, Pappacoda, Tagliafer,
Picking a sustenance from wear and tear
By implements it sedulous employs
To undertake, lay down, mete out, o'er-toise
Sordello? Fifty creepers to elude
At once! They settled staunchly; shame ensued:
Behold the monarch of mankind succumb
To the last fool who turned him round his thumb,
As Naddo styled it! 'T was not worth oppose
The matter of a moment, gainsay those
He aimed at getting rid of; better think
Their thoughts and speak their speech, secure to slink
Back expeditiously to his safe place,
And chew the cudwhat he and what his race
Were really, each of them. Yet even this
Conformity was partial. He would miss
Some point, brought into contact with them ere
Assured in what small segment of the sphere
Of his existence they attended him;
Whence blunders, falsehoods rectifieda grim
Listslur it over! How? If dreams were tried,
His will swayed sicklily from side to side,
Nor merely neutralized his waking act
But tended e'en in fancy to distract
The intermediate will, the choice of means.
He lost the art of dreaming: Mantuan scenes
Supplied a baron, say, he sang before,
Handsomely reckless, full to running-o'er
Of gallantries; "abjure the soul, content
"With body, therefore!" Scarcely had he bent
Himself in dream thus low, when matter fast
Cried out, he found, for spirit to contrast
And task it duly; by advances slight,
The simple stuff becoming composite,
Count Lori grew Apollo: best recall
His fancy! Then would some rough peasant-Paul,
Like those old Ecelin confers with, glance
His gay apparel o'er; that countenance
Gathered his shattered fancies into one,
And, body clean abolished, soul alone
Sufficed the grey Paulician: by and by,
To balance the ethereality,
Passions were needed; foiled he sank again.
Meanwhile the world rejoiced ('t is time explain)
Because a sudden sickness set it free
From Adelaide. Missing the mother-bee,
Her mountain-hive Romano swarmed; at once
A rustle-forth of daughters and of sons
Blackened the valley. "I am sick too, old,
"Half-crazed I think; what good's the Kaiser's gold
"To such an one? God help me! for I catch
"My children's greedy sparkling eyes at watch
"'He bears that double breastplate on,' they say,
"'So many minutes less than yesterday!'
"Beside, Monk Hilary is on his knees
"Now, sworn to kneel and pray till God shall please
"Exact a punishment for many things
"You know, and some you never knew; which brings
"To memory, Azzo's sister Beatrix
"And Richard's Giglia are my Alberic's
"And Ecelin's betrothed; the Count himself
"Must get my Palma: Ghibellin and Guelf
"Mean to embrace each other." So began
Romano's missive to his fighting man
Taurelloon the Tuscan's death, away
With Friedrich sworn to sail from Naples' bay
Next month for Syria. Never thunder-clap
Out of Vesuvius' throat, like this mishap
Startled him. "That accursed Vicenza! I
"Absent, and she selects this time to die!
"Ho, fellows, for Vicenza!" Half a score
Of horses ridden dead, he stood before
Romano in his reeking spurs: too late
"Boniface urged me, Este could not wait,"
The chieftain stammered; "let me die in peace
"Forget me! Was it I who craved increase
"Of rule? Do you and Friedrich plot your worst
"Against the Father: as you found me first
"So leave me now. Forgive me! Palma, sure,
"Is at Goito still. Retain that lure
"Only be pacified!"
          The country rung
With such a piece of news: on every tongue,
How Ecelin's great servant, congeed off,
Had done a long day's service, so, might doff
The green and yellow, and recover breath
At Mantua, whither,since Retrude's death,
(The girlish slip of a Sicilian bride
From Otho's house, he carried to reside
At Mantua till the Ferrarese should pile
A structure worthy her imperial style,
The gardens raise, the statues there enshrine,
She never lived to see)although his line
Was ancient in her archives and she took
A pride in him, that city, nor forsook
Her child when he forsook himself and spent
A prowess on Romano surely meant
For his own growthwhither he ne'er resorts
If wholly satisfied (to trust reports)
With Ecelin. So, forward in a trice
Were shows to greet him. "Take a friend's advice,"
Quoth Naddo to Sordello, "nor be rash
"Because your rivals (nothing can abash
"Some folks) demur that we pronounced you best
"To sound the great man's welcome; 't is a test,
"Remember! Strojavacca looks asquint,
"The rough fat sloven; and there 's plenty hint
"Your pinions have received of late a shock
"Outsoar them, cobswan of the silver flock!
"Sing well!" A signal wonder, song 's no whit
Facilitated.
      Fast the minutes flit;
Another day, Sordello finds, will bring
The soldier, and he cannot choose but sing;
So, a last shift, quits Mantuaslow, alone:
Out of that aching brain, a very stone,
Song must be struck. What occupies that front?
Just how he was more awkward than his wont
The night before, when Naddo, who had seen
Taurello on his progress, praised the mien
For dignity no crosses could affect
Such was a joy, and might not he detect
A satisfaction if established joys
Were proved imposture? Poetry annoys
Its utmost: wherefore fret? Verses may come
Or keep away! And thus he wandered, dumb
Till evening, when he paused, thoroughly spent,
On a blind hill-top: down the gorge he went,
Yielding himself up as to an embrace.
The moon came out; like features of a face,
A querulous fraternity of pines,
Sad blackthorn clumps, leafless and grovelling vines
Also came out, made gradually up
The picture; 't was Goito's mountain-cup
And castle. He had dropped through one defile
He never dared explore, the Chief erewhile
Had vanished by. Back rushed the dream, enwrapped
Him wholly. 'T was Apollo now they lapped,
Those mountains, not a pettish minstrel meant
To wear his soul away in discontent,
Brooding on fortune's malice. Heart and brain
Swelled; he expanded to himself again,
As some thin seedling spice-tree starved and frail,
Pushing between cat's head and ibis' tail
Crusted into the porphyry pavement smooth,
Suffered remain just as it sprung, to soothe
The Soldan's pining daughter, never yet
Well in her chilly green-glazed minaret,
When rooted up, the sunny day she died,
And flung into the common court beside
Its parent tree. Come home, Sordello! Soon
Was he low muttering, beneath the moon,
Of sorrow saved, of quiet evermore,
Since from the purpose, he maintained before,
Only resulted wailing and hot tears.
Ah, the slim castle! dwindled of late years,
But more mysterious; gone to ruintrails
Of vine through every loop-hole. Nought avails
The night as, torch in hand, he must explore
The maple chamber: did I say, its floor
Was made of intersecting cedar beams?
Worn now with gaps so large, there blew cold streams
Of air quite from the dungeon; lay your ear
Close and 't is like, one after one, you hear
In the blind darkness water drop. The nests
And nooks retain their long ranged vesture-chests
Empty and smelling of the iris root
The Tuscan grated o'er them to recruit
Her wasted wits. Palma was gone that day,
Said the remaining women. Last, he lay
Beside the Carian group reserved and still.
The Body, the Machine for Acting Will,
Had been at the commencement proved unfit;
That for Demonstrating, Reflecting it,
Mankindno fitter: was the Will Itself
In fault?
     His forehead pressed the moonlit shelf
Beside the youngest marble maid awhile;
Then, raising it, he thought, with a long smile,
"I shall be king again!" as he withdrew
The envied scarf; into the font he threw
His crown
     Next day, no poet! "Wherefore?" asked
Taurello, when the dance of Jongleurs, masked
As devils, ended; "don't a song come next?"
The master of the pageant looked perplexed
Till Naddo's whisper came to his relief.
"His Highness knew what poets were: in brief,
"Had not the tetchy race prescriptive right
"To peevishness, caprice? or, call it spite,
"One must receive their nature in its length
"And breadth, expect the weakness with the strength!"
So phrasing, till, his stock of phrases spent,
The easy-natured soldier smiled assent,
Settled his portly person, smoothed his chin,
And nodded that the bull-bait might begin.


~ Robert Browning, Sordello - Book the Second
,

IN CHAPTERS [108/108]



   30 Integral Yoga
   18 Philosophy
   13 Christianity
   4 Psychology
   2 Yoga
   2 Theosophy
   2 Poetry
   1 Occultism
   1 Mythology
   1 Hinduism


   51 Sri Aurobindo
   21 Nolini Kanta Gupta
   13 Plotinus
   3 Jordan Peterson
   2 The Mother
   2 Plato
   2 Friedrich Nietzsche
   2 Aldous Huxley


   18 The Synthesis Of Yoga
   18 The Life Divine
   9 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
   6 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02
   5 The Secret Doctrine
   5 The Human Cycle
   4 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
   3 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04
   3 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01
   3 Maps of Meaning
   3 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
   3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
   2 The Perennial Philosophy
   2 Talks
   2 Essays On The Gita
   2 Essays Divine And Human
   2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
   2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04


01.02 - Natures Own Yoga, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   An organ in the human being has been especially developed to become the effective instrument of this accelerated Yogic process the self-consciousness which I referred to as being the distinctive characteristic of man is a function of this organ. It is his soul, his psychic being; originally it is the spark of the Divine Consciousness which came down and became involved in Matter and has been endeavouring ever since to release itself through the upward march of evolution. It is this which presses on continually as the stimulus to the evolutionary movement; and in man it has attained sufficient growth and power and has come so far to the front from behind the veil that it can now lead and mould his external consciousness. It is also the channel through which the Divine Consciousness can flow down into the inferior levels of human nature. It is the being no bigger than the thumb ever seated within the heart, spoken of in the Upanishads. It is likewise the basis of true individuality and personal identity. It is again the reflection or expression in evolutionary Nature of one's essential selfjivtman that is above, an eternal portion of the Divine, one with the Divine and yet not dissolved and lost in it. The psychic being is thus on the one hand in direct contact with the Divine and the higher consciousness, and on the other it is the secret upholder and controller' (bhart, antarymin) of the inferior consciousness, the hidden nucleus round which the body and the life and the mind of the individual are built up and organised.
   The first decisive step in Yoga is taken when one becomes conscious of the psychic being, or, looked at from the other side, when the psychic being comes forward and takes possession of the external being, begins to initiate and influence the movements of the mind and life and body and gradually free them from the ordinary round of ignorant nature. The awakening of the psychic being means, as I have said, not only a deepening and heightening of the consciousness and its release from the obscurity and limitation of the inferior Prakriti, confined to the lower threefold status, into what is behind and beyond; it means also a return of the deeper and higher consciousness upon the lower hemisphere and a consequent purification and illumination and regeneration of the latter. Finally, when the psychic being is in full self-possession and power, it can be the vehicle of the direct supramental consciousness which will then be able to act freely and absolutely for the entire transformation of the external nature, its transfiguration into a perfect body of the Truth-consciousness in a word, its divinisation.
  --
   Now, with regard to the time that the present stage of evolution is likely to take for its fulfilment, one can presume that since or if the specific urge and stress has manifested and come up to the front, this very fact would show that the problem has become a problem of actuality, and even that it can be dealt with as if it had to be solved now or never. We have said that in man, with man's self-consciousness or the consciousness of the psychic being as the instrument, evolution has attained the capacity of a swift and concentrated process, which is the process of Yoga; the process will become swifter and more concentrated, the more that instrument grows and gathers power and is infused with the divine afflatus. In fact, evolution has been such a process of gradual acceleration in tempo from the very beginning. The earliest stage, for example, the stage of dead Matter, of the play of the mere chemical forces was a very, very long one; it took millions and millions of years to come to the point when the manifestation of life became possible. But the period of elementary life, as manifested in the plant world that followed, although it too lasted a good many millions of years, was much briefer than the preceding periodit ended with the advent of the first animal form. The age of animal life, again, has been very much shorter than that of the plant life before man came upon earth. And man is already more than a million or two years oldit is fully time that a higher order of being should be created out of him.
   The Dhammapada, I. 1

01.04 - The Poetry in the Making, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The three or four major orders I speak of in reference to conscious artistry are exampled characteristically in the history of the evolution of Greek poetry. It must be remembered, however, at the very outset that the Greeks as a race were nothing if not rational and intellectual. It was an element of strong self-consciousness that they brought into human culture that was their special gift. Leaving out of account Homer who was, as I said, a primitive, their classical age began with Aeschylus who was the first and the most spontaneous and intuitive of the Great Three. Sophocles, who comes next, is more balanced and self-controlled and pregnant with a reasoned thought-content clothed in polished phrasing. We feel here that the artist knew what he was about and was exercising a conscious control over his instruments and materials, unlike his predecessor who seemed to be completely carried away by the onrush of the poetic enthousiasmos. Sophocles, in spite of his artistic perfection or perhaps because of it, appears to be just a little, one remove, away from the purity of the central inspiration there is a veil, although a thin transparent veil, yet a veil between which intervenes. With the third of the Brotherhood, Euripides, we slide lower downwe arrive at a predominantly mental transcription of an experience or inner conception; but something of the major breath continues, an aura, a rhythm that maintains the inner contact and thus saves the poetry. In a subsequent age, in Theocritus, for example, poetry became truly very much 'sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought', so much of virtuosity and precocity entered into it; in other words, the poet then was an excessively self-conscious artist. That seems to be the general trend of all literature.
   But should there be an inherent incompatibility between spontaneous creation and self-consciousness? As we have seen, a harmony and fusion can and do happen of the superconscious and the normally conscious in the Yogi. Likewise, an artist also can be wakeful and transparent enough so that he is conscious on both the levels simultaneouslyabove, he is conscious of the source and origin of his inspiration, and on the level plain he is conscious of the working of the instrument, how the vehicle transcribes and embodies what comes from elsewhere. The poet's consciousness becomes then divalent as it werethere is a sense of absolute passivity in respect of the receiving apparatus and coupled and immisced with it there is also the sense of dynamism, of conscious agency as in his secret being he is the master of his apparatus and one with the Inspirerin other words, the poet is both a seer (kavih) and a creator or doer (poits).
   Not only so, the future development of the poetic consciousness seems inevitably to lead to such a consummation in which the creative and the critical faculties will not be separate but form part of one and indivisible movement. Historically, human consciousness has grown from unconsciousness to consciousness and from consciousness to self-consciousness; man's creative and artistic genius too has moved pari passu in the same direction. The earliest and primitive poets were mostly unconscious, that is to say, they wrote or said things as they came to them spontaneously, without effort, without reflection, they do not seem to know the whence and wherefore and whither of it all, they know only that the wind bloweth as it listeth. That was when man had not yet eaten the fruit of knowledge, was still in the innocence of childhood. But as he grew up and progressed, he became more and more conscious, capable of exerting and exercising a deliberate will and initiating a purposive action, not only in the external practical field but also in the psychological domain. If the earlier group is called "primitives", the later one, that of conscious artists, usually goes by the name of "classicists." Modern creators have gone one step farther in the direction of self-consciousness, a return upon oneself, an inlook of full awareness and a free and alert activity of the critical faculties. An unconscious artist in the sense of the "primitives" is almost an impossible phenomenon in the modern world. All are scientists: an artist cannot but be consciously critical, deliberate, purposive in what he creates and how he creates. Evidently, this has cost something of the old-world spontaneity and supremacy of utterance; but it cannot be helped, we cannot comm and the tide to roll back, Canute-like. The feature has to be accepted and a remedy and new orientation discovered.
   The modern critical self-consciousness in the artist originated with the Romantics. The very essence of Romanticism is curiosity the scientist's pleasure in analysing, observing, experimenting, changing the conditions of our reactions, mental or sentimental or even nervous and physical by way of discovery of new and unforeseen or unexpected modes of "psychoses" or psychological states. Goethe, Wordsworth, Stendhal represented a mentality and initiated a movement which led logically to the age of Hardy, Housman and Bridges and in the end to that of Lawrence and Joyce, Ezra Pound and Eliot and Auden. On the Continent we can consider Flaubert as the last of the classicists married to the very quintessence of Romanticism. A hard, self-regarding, self-critical mentality, a cold scalpel-like gaze that penetrates and upturns the reverse side of things is intimately associated with the poetic genius of Mallarm and constitutes almost the whole of Valry's. The impassioned lines of a very modern poet like Aragon are also characterised by a consummate virtuosity in chiselled artistry, conscious and deliberate and willed at every step and turn.
   The consciously purposive activity of the poetic consciousness in fact, of all artistic consciousness has shown itself with a clear and unambiguous emphasis in two directions. First of all with regard to the subject-matter: the old-world poets took things as they were, as they were obvious to the eye, things of human nature and things of physical Nature, and without questioning dealt with them in the beauty of their normal form and function. The modern mentality has turned away from the normal and the obvious: it does not accept and admit the "given" as the final and definitive norm of things. It wishes to discover and establish other norms, it strives to bring about changes in the nature and condition of things, envisage the shape of things to come, work for a brave new world. The poet of today, in spite of all his effort to remain a pure poet, in spite of Housman's advocacy of nonsense and not-sense being the essence of true Art, is almost invariably at heart an incorrigible prophet. In revolt against the old and established order of truths and customs, against all that is normally considered as beautiful,ideals and emotions and activities of man or aspects and scenes and movements of Natureagainst God or spiritual life, the modern poet turns deliberately to the ugly and the macabre, the meaningless, the insignificant and the triflingtins and teas, bone and dust and dustbin, hammer and sicklehe is still a prophet, a violent one, an iconoclast, but one who has his own icon, a terribly jealous being, that seeks to pull down the past, erase it, to break and batter and knead the elements in order to fashion out of them something conforming to his heart's desire. There is also the class who have the vision and found the truth and its solace, who are prophets, angelic and divine, messengers and harbingers of a new beauty that is to dawn upon earth. And yet there are others in whom the two strains mingle or approach in a strange way. All this means that the artist is far from being a mere receiver, a mechanical executor, a passive unconscious instrument, but that he is supremely' conscious and master of his faculties and implements. This fact is doubly reinforced when we find how much he is preoccupied with the technical aspect of his craft. The richness and variety of patterns that can be given to the poetic form know no bounds today. A few major rhythms were sufficient for the ancients to give full expression to their poetic inflatus. For they cared more for some major virtues, the basic and fundamental qualitiessuch as truth, sublimity, nobility, forcefulness, purity, simplicity, clarity, straightforwardness; they were more preoccupied with what they had to say and they wanted, no doubt, to say it beautifully and powerfully; but the modus operandi was not such a passion or obsession with them, it had not attained that almost absolute value for itself which modern craftsmanship gives it. As technology in practical life has become a thing of overwhelming importance to man today, become, in the Shakespearean phrase, his "be-all and end-all", even so the same spirit has invaded and pervaded his aesthetics too. The subtleties, variations and refinements, the revolutions, reversals and inventions which the modern poet has ushered and takes delight in, for their own sake, I repeat, for their intrinsic interest, not for the sake of the subject which they have to embody and clothe, have never been dream by Aristotle, the supreme legislator among the ancients, nor by Horace, the almost incomparable craftsman among the ancients in the domain of poetry. Man has become, to be sure, a self-conscious creator to the pith of his bone.
   Such a stage in human evolution, the advent of Homo Faber, has been a necessity; it has to serve a purpose and it has done admirably its work. Only we have to put it in its proper place. The salvation of an extremely self-conscious age lies in an exceeding and not in a further enhancement or an exclusive concentration of the self-consciousness, nor, of course, in a falling back into the original unconsciousness. It is this shift in the poise of consciousness that has been presaged and prepared by the conscious, the scientific artists of today. Their task is to forge an instrument for a type of poetic or artistic creation completely new, unfamiliar, almost revolutionary which the older mould would find it impossible to render adequately. The yearning of the human consciousness was not to rest satisfied with the familiar and the ordinary, the pressure was for the discovery of other strands, secret stores of truth and reality and beauty. The first discovery was that of the great Unconscious, the dark and mysterious and all-powerful subconscient. Many of our poets and artists have been influenced by this power, some even sought to enter into that region and become its denizens. But artistic inspiration is an emanation of Light; whatever may be the field of its play, it can have its origin only in the higher spheres, if it is to be truly beautiful and not merely curious and scientific.
   That is what is wanted at present in the artistic world the true inspiration, the breath from higher altitudes. And here comes the role of the mystic, the Yogi. The sense of evolution, the march of human consciousness demands and prophesies that the future poet has to be a mysticin him will be fulfilled the travail of man's conscious working. The self-conscious craftsman, the tireless experimenter with his adventurous analytic mind has sharpened his instrument, made it supple and elastic, tempered, refined and enriched it; that is comparable to what we call the aspiration or call from below. Now the Grace must descend and fulfil. And when one rises into this higher consciousness beyond the brain and mind, when one lives there habitually, one knows the why and the how of things, one becomes a perfectly conscious operator and still retains all spontaneity and freshness and wonder and magic that are usually associated with inconscience and irreflection. As there is a spontaneity of instinct, there is likewise also a spontaneity of vision: a child is spontaneous in its movements, even so a seer. Not only so, the higher spontaneity is more spontaneous, for the higher consciousness means not only awareness but the free and untrammelled activity and expression of the truth and reality it is.
  --
   But the evolutionary urge, as I have said, has always been to bring down or instil more and more light and self-consciousness into the depths of the heart too: and the first result has been an intellectualisation, a rationalisation of the consciousness, a movement of scientific observation and criticism which very naturally leads to a desiccation of the poetic enthusiasm and fervour. But a period of transcendence is in gestation. All efforts of modern poets and craftsmen, even those that seem apparently queer, bizarre and futile, are at bottom a travail for this transcendence, including those that seem contradictory to it.
   Whether the original and true source of the poet's inspiration lies deep within or high above, all depends upon the mediating instrument the mind (in its most general sense) and speech for a successful transcription. Man's ever-growing consciousness demanded also a conscious development and remoulding of these two factors. A growth, a heightening and deepening of the consciousness meant inevitably a movement towards the spiritual element in things. And that means, we have said, a twofold change in the future poet's make-up. First as regards the substance. The revolutionary shift that we notice in modern poets towards a completely new domain of subject-matter is a signpost that more is meant than what is expressed. The superficialities and futilities that are dealt with do not in their outward form give the real trend of things. In and through all these major and constant preoccupation of our poets is "the pain of the present and the passion for the future": they are, as already stated, more prophets than poets, but prophets for the moment crying in the wildernessalthough some have chosen the path of denial and revolt. They are all looking ahead or beyond or deep down, always yearning for another truth and reality which will explain, justify and transmute the present calvary of human living. Such an acute tension of consciousness has necessitated an overhauling of the vehicle of expression too, the creation of a mode of expressing the inexpressible. For that is indeed what human consciousness and craft are aiming at in the present stage of man's evolution. For everything, almost everything that can be normally expressed has been expressed and in a variety of ways as much as is possible: that is the history of man's aesthetic creativity. Now the eye probes into the unexpressed world; for the artist too the Upanishadic problem has cropped up:
  --
   In other words, the tension in the human consciousness has been raised to the nth power, the heat of a brooding consciousness is about to lead it to an outburst of new creationsah tapastaptva. Human self-consciousness, the turning of oneself upon oneself, the probing and projecting of oneself into oneself self-consciousness raised so often to the degree of self-torture, marks the acute travail of the spirit. The thousand "isms" and "logies" that pullulate in all fields of life, from the political to the artistic or even the religious and the spiritual indicate how the human laboratory is working at white heat. They are breaches in the circuit of the consciousness, volcanic eruptions from below or cosmic-ray irruptions from above, tearing open the normal limit and boundaryBaudelaire's couvercle or the "golden lid" of the Upanishads-disclosing and bringing into the light of common day realities beyond and unseen till now.
   Ifso long the poet was more or less a passive, a half-conscious or unconscious intermediary between the higher and the lower lights and delights, his role in the future will be better fulfilled when he becomes fully aware of it and consciously moulds and directs his creative energies. The poet is and has to be the harbinger and minstrel of unheard-of melodies: he is the fashioner of the creative word that brings down and embodies the deepest aspirations and experiences of the human consciousness. The poet is a missionary: he is missioned by Divine Beauty to radiate upon earth something of her charm and wizardry. The fullness of his role he can only play up when he is fully conscious for it is under that condition that all obstructing and obscuring elements lying across the path of inspiration can be completely and wholly eradicated: the instrument purified and tempered and transmuted can hold and express golden truths and beauties and puissances that otherwise escape the too human mould.

01.07 - Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Man then, according to Pascal, is by nature a sinful thing. He can lay no claim to noble virtue as his own: all in him is vile, he is a lump of dirt and filth. Even the greatest has his full share of this taint. The greatest, the saintliest, and the meanest, the most sinful, all meet, all are equal on this common platform; all have the same feet of clay. Man is as miserable a creature as a beast, as much a part and product of Nature as a plant. Only there is this difference that an animal or a tree is unconscious, while man knows that he is miserable. This knowledge or perception makes him more miserable, but that is his real and only greatness there is no other. His thought, his self-consciousness, and his sorrow and repentance and contrition for what he is that is the only good partMary's part that has been given to him. Here are Pascal's own words on the subject:
   "The greatness of man is great in this that he knows he is miserable. A tree does not know that it is miserable.

01.09 - The Parting of the Way, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The differentia, in each case, lies in the degree and nature of consciousness, since it is consciousness that forms the substance and determines the mode of being. Now, the inorganic is characterised by un-consciousness, the vegetable by sub-consciousness, the animal by consciousness and man by self-consciousness. Man knows that he knows, an animal only knows; a plant does not even know, it merely feels or senses; matter cannot do that even, it simply acts or rather is acted upon. We are not concerned here, however, with the last two forms of being; we will speak of the first two only.
   We say, then, that man is distinguished from the animal by his having consciousness as it has, but added to it the consciousness of self. Man acts and feels and knows as much as the animal does; but also he knows that he acts, he knows that he feels, he knows that he knowsand this is a thing the animal cannot do. It is the awakening of the sense of self in every mode of being that characterises man, and it is owing to this consciousness of an ego behind, of a permanent unit of reference, which has modified even the functions of knowing and feeling and acting, has refashioned them in a mould which is not quite that of the animal, in spite of a general similarity.
   So the humanity of man consists in his consciousness of the self or ego. Is there no other higher mode of consciousness? Or is self-consciousness the acme, the utmost limit to which consciousness can raise itself? If it is so, then we are bound to conclude that humanity will remain eternally human in its fundamental nature; the only progress, if progress at all we choose to call it, will consist perhaps in accentuating this consciousness of the self and in expressing it through a greater variety of stresses, through a richer combination of its colour and light and shade and rhythm. But also, this may not be sothere may be the possibility of a further step, a transcending of the consciousness of the self. It seems unnatural and improbable that having risen from un-consciousness to self-consciousness through a series of continuous marches, Nature should suddenly stop and consider what she had achieved to be her final end. Has Nature become bankrupt of her creative genius, exhausted of her upward drive? Has she to remain content with only a clever manipulation, a mere shuffling and re-arranging of the materials already produced?
   As a matter of fact it is not so. The glimpses of a higher form of consciousness we can see even now present in self-consciousness. We have spoken of the different stages of evolution as if they were separate and distinct and incommensurate entities. They may be described as such for the purpose of a logical understanding, but in reality they form a single progressive continuum in which one level gradually fuses into another. And as the higher level takes up the law of the lower and evolves out of it a characteristic function, even so the law of the higher level with its characteristic function is already involved and envisaged in the law of the lower level and its characteristic function. It cannot be asserted positively that because man's special virtue is self-consciousness, animals cannot have that quality on any account. We do see, if we care to observe closely and dispassionately, that animals of the higher order, as they approach the level of humanity, show more and more evident signs of something which is very much akin to, if not identical with the human characteristic of self-consciousness.
   So, in man also, especially of that order which forms the crown of humanityin poets and artists and seers and great men of actioncan be observed a certain characteristic form of consciousness, which is something other than, greater than the consciousness of the mere self. It is difficult as yet to characterise definitely what that thing is. It is the awakening of the self to something which is beyond itselfit is the cosmic self, the oversoul, the universal being; it is God, it is Turiya, it is sachchidanandain so many ways the thing has been sought to be envisaged and expressed. The consciousness of that level has also a great variety of names given to it Intuition, Revelation, cosmic consciousness, God-consciousness. It is to be noted here, however, that the thing we are referring to, is not the Absolute, the Infinite, the One without a second. It is not, that is to say, the supreme Reality the Brahmanin its static being, in its undivided and indivisible unity; it is the dynamic Brahman, that status of the supreme Reality where creation, the diversity of Becoming takes rise, it is the Truth-worldRitam the domain of typal realities. The distinction is necessary, as there does seem to be such a level of consciousness intermediary, again, between man and the Absolute, between self-consciousness and the supreme consciousness. The simplest thing would be to give that intermediate level of consciousness a negative namesince being as yet human we cannot foresee exactly its composition and function the super-consciousness.
   The inflatus of something vast and transcendent, something which escapes all our familiar schemes of cognisance and yet is insistent with a translucent reality of its own, we do feel sometimes within us invading and enveloping our individuality, lifting up our sense of self and transmuting our personality into a reality which can hardly be called merely human. All this life of ego-bound rationality then melts away and opens out the passage for a life of vision and power. Thus it is the poet has felt when he says, "there is this incalculable element in human life influencing us from the mystery which envelops our being, and when reason is satisfied, there is something deeper than Reason which makes us still uncertain of truth. Above the human reason there is a transcendental sphere to which the spirit of men sometimes rises, and the will may be forged there at a lordly smithy and made the unbreakable pivot."(A.E.)
   This passage from the self-conscient to the super-conscient does not imply merely a shifting of the focus of consciousness. The transmutation of consciousness involves a purer illumination, a surer power and a wider compass; it involves also a fundamental change in the very mode of being and living. It gives quite a different life-intuition and a different life-power. The change in the motif brings about a new form altogether, a re-casting and re-shaping and re-energising of the external materials as well. As the lift from mere consciousness to self-consciousness meant all the difference between an animal and a man, so the lift again from self-consciousness to super-consciousness will mean the difference of a whole world between man and the divine creature that is to be.
   Indeed it is a divine creature that should be envisaged on the next level of evolution. The mental and the moral, the psychical and the physical transfigurations which must follow the change in the basic substratum do imply such a mutation, the birth of a new species, as it were, fashioned in the nature of the gods. The vision of angels and Siddhas, which man is having ceaselessly since his birth, may be but a prophecy of the future actuality.

01.11 - Aldous Huxley: The Perennial Philosophy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   We fear Mr. Huxley has completely missed the point of the cryptic sentence. He seems to take it as meaning that human kindness and morality are a means to the recovery of the Lost Way-although codes of ethics and deliberate choices are not sufficient in themselves, they are only a second best, yet they mark the rise of self-consciousness and have to be utilised to pass on into the unitive knowledge that is Tao. This explanation or amplification seems to us somewhat confused and irrelevant to the idea expressed in the apophthegm. What is stated here is much simpler and transparent. It is this that when the Divine is absent and the divine Knowledge, then comes in man with his human mental knowledge: it is man's humanity that clouds the Divine and to reach the' Divine one must reject the human values, all the moralities, sarva dharmn, seek only the Divine. The lesser way lies through the dualities, good and evil, the Great Way is beyond them and cannot be limited or measured by the relative standards. Especially in the modern age we see the decline and almost the disappearance of the Greater Light and instead a thousand smaller lights are lighted which vainly strive to dispel the gathering darkness. These do not help, they are false lights and men are apt to cling to them, shutting their eyes to the true one which is not that that one worships here and now, nedam yadidam upsate.
   There is a beautiful quotation from the Chinese sage, Wu Ch'ng-n, regarding the doubtful utility of written Scriptures:

0 1963-08-03, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Physical Matter, physical substance the very elementary consciousness thats in physical substancehas been so ill-treated (since mans presence on earth, I suppose, because before man, there probably wasnt enough self-consciousness to be aware of being ill-treated; the substance wasnt conscious enough, I suppose, to make a distinction between a normal peaceful state and unfavorable conditions; but anyway, that goes back quite long time), so ill-treated that it finds it very hard to believe things can be different. That consciousness has an aspirationan aspiration especially for a LUMINOUS peace, something that isnt the dark peace of Unconsciousness, which it doesnt like (I dont know if it ever liked it, but it no longer does). It aspires to a luminous peace; not to a consciousness full of various things, not that: simply to a peaceful consciousness, very peaceful, very quiet, very luminous thats what it wants. Yet at the same time, it has some difficulty believing that its possible. I am experiencing it: the concrete and absolutely tangible intervention of the supreme Power, supreme Light and supreme Goodnessit [the consciousness in physical substance] has the experience of that, and every time it has a new sense of wonder, but in that sense of wonder I can see something like: Is it really possible?
   It gives me the impression, you know, of a dog that has been beaten so much that it expects nothing but blows.

02.02 - Lines of the Descent of Consciousness, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Now this imprisoned consciousness in Matter forces Matter to be conscious again when driven on the upward gradient. This tension creates a fire, as it were, in the heart of Matter, a mighty combustion and whorl in the core of things, of which the blazing sun is an image and a symbol. All this pressure and heat and concussion and explosion mean a mighty struggle in Matter to give birth to that which is within. Consciousness that is latent must be made patent; it must reveal itself in Matter and through Matter, making Matter its vehicle and embodiment. This is the mystery of the birth of Life, the first sprouting of consciousness in Matter. Life is half-awakened consciousness, consciousness yet in a dream state. Its earliest and most rudimentary manifestation is embodied in the plant or vegetable world. The submerged consciousness strives to come still further up, to express itself to a greater degree and in a clearer mode, to become more free and plastic in its movements; hence the appearance of the animal as the next higher formulation. Here consciousness delivers itself as a psyche, a rudimentary one, no doubt, a being of feeling and sensation, and elementary mentality playing in a field of vitalised Matter. Even then it is not satisfied with itself, it asks for a still more free and clear articulation: it is not satisfied, for it has not yet found its own level. Hence after the animal, arrives man with a full-fledged Mind, with intelligence and self-consciousness and capacity for self-determination.
   Thus we see that evolution, the unfolding of consciousness follows exactly the line of its involution, only the other way round: the mounting consciousness re-ascends step by step the same gradient, retraces the same path along which it had descended. The descending steps are broadly speaking (I) Existence-Consciousness-Bliss, (2) Supermind and its secondary form Overmind, (3) Mind(i) mind proper and (ii) the intermediary psyche, (4) Life, (5) Matter. The ascending consciousness starting from Matter rises into Life, passes on through Life and Psyche into Mind, driving towards the Supermind and Sachchidananda. At the present stage of evolution, consciousness has arrived at the higher levels of Mind; it is now striving to cross it altogether and enter the Overmind and the Supermind. It will not rest content until it arrives at the organisation in and through the Supermind: for that is the drive and purpose of Nature in the next cycle of evolution.
  --
   The formulation or revelation of the Psyche marks another line of what we have been describing as the Descent of Consciousness. The phenomenon of individualisation has at its back the phenomenon of the growth of the Psyche. It is originally a spark or nucleus of consciousness thrown into Matter that starts growing and organising itself behind the veil, in and through the movements and activities of the apparent vehicle consisting of the triple nexus of Body (Matter) and Life and Mind. The extreme root of the psychic growth extends perhaps right into the body, consciousness of Matter, but its real physical basis and tenement is found only with the growth and formation of the physical heart. And yet the psychic individuality behind the animal organisation is very rudimentary. All that can be said is that it is there, in potentia, it exists, it is simple being: it has not started becoming. This is man's speciality: in him the psychic begins to be dynamic; to be organised and to organise, it is a psychic personality that he possesses. Now this flowering of the psychic personality is due to an especial Descent, the descent of a Person from another level of consciousness. That Person (or Superperson) is the jvatman, the Individual Self, the central being of each individual formation. The Jivas are centres of multiplicity thrown up in the bosom of the infinite Consciousness: it is the supreme Consciousness eddying in unit formations to serve as the basis for the play of manifestation. They are not within the frame of manifestation (as the typal formations in the Supermind are), they are above or beyond or beside it and stand there eternally and invariably in and as part and parcel of the one supreme RealitySachchidananda. But the Jivatman from its own status casts its projection, representation, delegated formulationemanation, in the phraseology of the neo-Platonistsinto the manifestation of the triple complex of mind, life and body, that is to say, into the human vehicle, and thus stands behind as the psychic personality or the soul. This soul, we have seen, is a developing, organising focus of consciousness growing from below and comes to its own in the human being: or we can put it the other way, that is to say, when it comes to its own, then the human being appears. And it has come to its own precisely by a descent of its own self from above, in the same manner as with the other descents already described. Now, this coming to its own means that it begins henceforth to exercise its royal power, its natural and inherent divine right, viz, of consciously and directly controlling and organising its terrestrial kingdom which is the body and life and mind. The exercise of conscious directive will, supported and illumined by a self-consciousness, I that occurs with the advent of the Mind is a function of the I Purusha, the self-conscious being, in the Mind; but this self-conscious being has been able to come up, manifest itself and be active, because of pressure of the underlying psychic personality that has formed here.
   Thus we have three characteristics of the human personality accruing from the psychic consciousness that supports and inspires it:(1) self-consciousness: an animal acts, feels and even knows, but man knows that he acts, knows that he feels, knows even that he knows. This phenomenon of consciousness turning round upon itself is the hallmark of the human being; (2) a conscious will holding together and harmonising, fashioning and integrating the whole external nature evolved till now; (3) a purposive drive, a deliberate and voluntary orientation towards a higher and ever higher status of individualisation and personalisation,not only a horizontal movement seeking to embrace and organise the normal, the already attained level of consciousness, but also a vertical movement seeking to raise the level, attain altogether a new poise of higher organisation.
   These characters, it is true, are not clear and pronounced, do not lie in front, at the beginning of the human personality. The normal human person has his psyche very much behind; but it is still there as antarymin, as the secret Inner Controller. And whatever the vagaries of the outer instruments or their slavery to the mode of Ignorance, in and through all that, it is this Inner Guide that holds the reins and drives upward in the end.

02.02 - The Message of the Atomic Bomb, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   In one sense certainly there has been a progress. This march of machinery, this evolution of tools means man's increasing mastery over Nature, even though physical nature. The primitive man like the animal is a slave, a puppet driven helplessly by Nature's forces. Both lead more or less a life of reflex action: there is here no free, original initiation of action or movement. The slow discovery of Nature's secrets, the gradual application and utilisation of these secrets in actual life meant, first, a liberation of man's conscious being originally imbedded in Nature's inertial movements, and then, a growing power to react upon Nature and mould and change it according to the will of the conscious being. The result at the outset was a release and organisation on the mental level, in the domain of reason and intelligence. Of course, man found at once that this increasing self-consciousness and self-power meant immense possibilities for good, but, unfortunately, for evil also. And so to guard against the latter contingency, rules and regulations were framed to control and canalise the new-found capacities. The Dharma of the Kshatriya, the honour of the Samurai, the code of Chivalry, all meant that. The power to kill was sought to be checked and restrained by such injunctions as, for example, not to hit below the belt, not to fight a disarmed or less armed opponent and so on. The same principle of morals and manners was maintained and continued through the centuries with necessary changes and modifications in application and finds enshrined today in International Covenants and Conventions.
   But a new situation has arisen for some time past. The last Great War (World War No. I) was crucial in many ways in the life of humanity. It opened a new direction of man's growth, opened and then closed also apparently. I am referring to the tragedy of the League of Nations. That was an attempt on the part of man (and Nature) to lift the inner life and consciousness to the level of the outer achievements. The attempt failed. Man could not rise to the height demanded of him. Now the second World War became logically more devastating and shattering; it has given the go-by to all ethical standards and codes of honour. The poison gas was not used not because of any moral restraint or disinclination, but because of practical and utilitarian considerations. The Atom Bomb, however, has spoken the word.

03.01 - The Malady of the Century, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   This knowledge, or rather, this curiosity does not arise from any depth of our being; it is the product of the meddlesome superficial brain-mind. We have become self-conscious; a vigilant self-consciousness is now the invariable coefficient of all our movements, but it is a self-consciousness that has deviated into mere mental introspection and intellectual analysis. It was the soul's consciousness, although perhaps more often from behind the veil, that once inspired and enlivened human nature in its youth; and life was after all a thing of beauty and joy for the soul is the one Rasa of existence. We have deposed the Divine King; an anarchy now reigns in human nature which has become the battle-ground of qualities and forces that are, if not always more crude, at least, invariably crooked and perverse. We live and move in the cold and blighting, and withal shallow, glare of the brain-mind.
   III

03.03 - Modernism - An Oriental Interpretation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Not quite so, certainly. The consciousness (rather, the self-consciousness) that man has gained in place of the unconsciousness or semi-consciousness, characteristic of the general mass in the past, and the growing sense of individuality and personal worth, which is an expression of that consciousness, are his assets, the hall-mark of his present-day nature and outlook and activity. The consciousness may not have always been used wisely, but still it is a light that has illumined him, brought him an awareness of himself and of things, that is new and in a special way close and intimate and revealing. The light is perhaps not of the kind that comes direct from high altitudesit is, as it were, a transverse ray cutting aslant; nonetheless, through its grace a self-revelation and a self-valuation have been possible in spheres hitherto unsurveyed and lost in darkness, and on a scale equally unprecedented. Life has found a self-light. It is indeed as yet a glare, lurid and uncertain, but it has the capacity to develop into, and call in, the white and tranquil effulgence of the Soul-light and the Supreme Light of which it is the image and precursor.
   Another similar cycle can be traced farther back in the past. The classicism of Grco-Latin culture dominated by mind and reasonalthough it was a kind of higher mind and intuitive reasonwas supplanted by the heart movement that Christ and the Christian cult initiated.

04.02 - Human Progress, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   An animal does not separate itself from Nature, exteriorise it and then seek to fashion it as he wants, try to make it yield things he requires. Man is precisely man because he has just this sense of self and of not-self and his whole life is the conquest of the not-self by the self: this is the whole story of his evolution. In the early stages his sense of agency and selfhood is at its minimum. The rough-hewn flint instruments are symbolic of the first attempts of the brain to set its impress upon crude and brute nature. The history of man's artisanship, which is the history of his civilisation, is also the history of his growing self-consciousness. The consciousness in its attempt to react upon nature separated itself from Nature, and at first stood over against it and then sought to stand over and above it. In this process of extricating itself from the sheath in which it was involved and fused, it came back upon itself, became more and more aware of its freedom and individual identity and agency.
   The question is now asked how far this self-consciousness given to man by his progress from stone to steelhas advanced and what is its future. The crucial problem is whether man has progressed in historical times. Granted that man with an iron tool is a more advanced type of humanity than man with a chipped stone tool, it may still be enquired whether he has made any real advance since the day he learnt to manipulate metal. If by advance or progress we mean efficiency and multiplication of tools, then surely there can be no doubt that Germany of today (perhaps now we have to say Germany of yesterday and America of today) is the most advanced type of humanityindeed they do make the claim in that country.
   So it is argued that man may have built up more and more efficient organisation in his outer life, he may have learnt to wield a greater variety and wealth of tools and instruments in an increasing degree of refinement and power; but this does not mean that his character, his nature or even the broad mould of his intelligence has changed or progressed. The records and remains of Pre-dynastic Egypt or of Proto-Aryan Indus valley go to show that those were creations of civilised men, as civilised as any modern people. The mind that produced the Rig Veda or the Book of the Dead or conceived the first pyramid is, in essential power of intelligence, no whit inferior to any modern scientific brain. Hence a distinction is sometimes made between culture and civilisation; what the moderns have achieved is progress with regard to civilisation, that is to say, the outer paraphernalia; but as regards culture a Plato, a Lao-tse, a Yajnavalkya are names to which we still bow down.
  --
   We characterise the change as a special degree or order of self-consciousness. self-consciousness, we have seen, is the sine qua non of humanity. It is the faculty or power by and with which man appears on earth and maintains himself as such, as a distinct species. Thanks to this faculty man has become the tool-making animal, the artisanhomo faber. But on emerging from the original mythopoeic to the scientific status man has become doubly self-conscious. self-consciousness means to be aware of oneself as standing separate from and against the environment and the world and acting upon it as a free agent, exercising one's deliberate will. Now the first degree of self-consciousness displayed itself in a creative activity by which consciousness remained no longer a suffering organon, but became a growing and directing, a reacting and new-creating agent. Man gained the power to shape the order of Nature according to the order of his inner will and consciousness. This creative activity, the activity of the artisan, developed along two lines: first, artisanship with regard to one's own self, one's inner nature and character, and secondly, with regard to the external nature, the not-self. The former gave rise to mysticism and Yoga and was especially cultivated in India, while the second has led us to Science, man's physical mastery, which is the especial field of European culture.
   Now the second degree of self-consciousness to which we referred is the scientific consciousness par excellence. It can be described also as the spirit and power of experimentation, or more precisely, of scientific experimentation: it involves generically the process with which we are familiar in the domain of industry and is termed synthetic, that is to say, it means the skill and capacity to create the conditions under which a given phenomenon can be repeated at will. Hence it means a perfect knowledge of the process of thingswhich again is a dual knowledge: (1) the knowledge of the steps gradually leading to the result and (2) the knowledge that has the power to resolve the result into its antecedent conditions. Thus the knowledge of the mechanism, the detailed working of things, is scientific knowledge, and therefore scientific knowledge can be truly said to be mechanistic knowledge, in the best sense of the term. Now the knowledge of the ends and the knowledge of the means (to use a phrase of Aldous Huxley) and the conscious control over either have given humanity a new degree of self-consciousness.
   It can be mentioned here that there can be a knowledge of ends without a corresponding knowledge of means, even there can be a control over ends without a preliminary control over meansperhaps not to perfection, but to a sufficient degree of practical utility. Much of the knowledgeespecially secular and scientificin ancient times was of this order; what we mean to say is that the knowledge was more instinctive or intuitive than rational or intellectual. In that knowledge the result only, the end that it to say, was the chief aim and concern, the means for attaining the end was, one cannot perhaps say, ignored, but slurred or slipped over as it were: the process was thus involved or understood, not expressed or detailed out. Thus we know of some mathematical problems to which correct solutions were given of which the process is not extant or lost as some say. Our suggestion is that there was in fact very little of the process as we know it now the solution was reached per saltum, that is to say, somehow, in the same manner as we find it happening even today in child prodigies.
  --
   We have said that this methodologism the knowledge of means and the consequent control over means the hall-mark of modern scientific knowledgeis a new degree of self-consciousness which is the special characteristic of the human consciousness. Put philosophically, we can say that the discovery of the subject and its growing affirmation as an independent factor in a subject-object relation marks the evolutionary course of the human consciousness.
   A still further unveiling seems to be in progress now. The subject has discovered itself as separate from the observed object and still embracing it: but a given subject-object relationship in its turn again is being viewed as itself an object to another subject consciousness, a super-subject. That way lie the ever widening horizons of consciousness opened up by Yoga and spiritual discipline.
   In other words, the self-consciousness which marks off man as the highest of living beings as yet evolved by Nature is still not her highest possible instrumentation. As has been experienced and foreseen by Yogins in all ages and climes and as it is being borne in upon the modern mind more and more imperatively, this self-consciousness has to be consciously transcended, lifted, transmutedworked out into the super-consciousness. Such is Nature's evolutionary nisus and such is the truth and fact man is being driven to face in his inner individual consciousness as well as outer collective life.
   We can thus note, broadly speaking, three stages in the human cycle of Nature's evolution. The first was the period of emergence of self-consciousness and the trials and experiments it went through to establish and confirm itself. The ancient civilisations represented this character of the human spirit. The subject freeing itself more and more from its environmental tegument, still living and moving within it and dynamically reacting upon itthis was the character we speak of. Next came the period when the free and dynamic subject feeling itself no more tied down to its natural objective sphere sought lines of development and adventure on its own account. This was the age of speculation and of scholasticism in philosophy and intellectual inquiry and of alchemy in natural sciencea period roughly equated with the Middle Ages. The Scientific Age coming last seeks to re-establish a junction and co-ordination between the free and dynamic self-consciousness and the mode and pattern of its objective field, involving a greater enrichment on one side the subjective consciousness and on the other, the objective environment, a corresponding change and effective reorganisation.
   The present age which ushers a fourth stagesignificantly called turiya or the transcendent, in Indian terminologyis pregnant with a fateful crisis. The stage of self-consciousness to which scientific development has arrived seems to land in a cul-de-sac, a blind alley: Science also is faced, almost helplessly, with the antinomies of reason that Kant discovered long ago in the domain of speculative philosophy. The way out, for a further growth and development and evolution, lies in a supersession of the self-consciousness, an elevation into a super-consciousnessas already envisaged by Yogis and Mystics everywherewhich will give a new potential and harmony to the human consciousness.
   This super consciousness is based upon a double movement of sublimation and integration which are precisely the two things basically aimed at by present-day psychology to meet the demands of new facts of consciousness. The rationalisation, specialisation or foreshortening of consciousness, mentioned above, is really an attempt at sublimation of the consciousness, its purification and ascension from baseranimal and vegetalconfines: only, ascension does not mean alienation, it must mean a gathering up of the lower elements also into their higher modes. Integration thus involves a descent, but it has to be pointed out, not merely or exclusively that, as Jung and his school seem to say. Certainly one has to see and recognise the aboriginal, the infra-rational elements imbedded in our nature and consciousness, the roots and foundations that lie buried under the super-structure that Evolution has erected. But that recognition must be accompanied by an upward look and sense: indeed it is healthy and fruitful only on condition that it occurs in a consciousness open to an infiltration of light coming from summits not only of the mind but above the mind. If we go back, it must be with a light that is ahead of us; that is the sense of evolution.

04.03 - The Eternal East and West, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The contrast points to a synthesis parallel to or an extension of the one we spoke of earlier. The first thing to note is that the individual is the source of all progress; the individual has the right, as it is also his duty to maintain himself and fulfil himself, grow to his largest and highest dimensions! Secondly, the individual has to take cognisance of the others, the whole humanity, in fact, even for the sake of his own progress. The individual is not an isolated entity, a freak product in Nature, but is integrated into it, a part and parcel of its texture and composition. Indeed the individual has a double role to perform, first to increase himself and secondly to increase others. Using the terms which the Sartrian view of existence has put into vogue, we can say, the individual en soi (in himself) is the individual in commonalty with others, living and moving in and through every other person; and then there is the individual pour soi (for himself), that is to say, existing for himself, apart and away from others, in his own inner absolute autonomy. The individual is individualised, i.e. raises and lifts himself and then becomes the spearhead breaking through the level where Nature stands fixed, leading others to follow and raise themselves. The individual is the power of organised self-consciousness; the growth of the individual means the growth of this power of organised consciousness. And growth means ascension or evolution from level to level. The individual starts from the organic cell, that is the lower end, it progresses through various gradations of the vital and mental worlds till he reaches the culmination of its growth in the Spirit as tman. But this vertical growth must be reflected in a horizontal growth too. There is a solidarity among the individuals forming the collective humanity so that the progress of one means the progress of others in the same direction, at least a chance and possibility opened for an advance. On the other hand, it may be noted that unless the collectivity rises to a certain level the individual too cannot go very far from it. A higher lift in the individual presupposes a corresponding or some minimum lift in others. There cannot or should not be too great a rift between the individual and the collective.
   As I said, the East usually ignores this correspondence and posits an exclusive either-or relation between the two terms. The individual, according to it, can reach its true individuality by only dissolving itin the Infinite. Of course, I am referring to an extreme position which is general in the East and symptomatic of its fundamental character. The West does not concern itself with these higher lines of individual growth and fulfilment, it limits the individual within the social frame and his mundane or profane life; but what we learn from this outlook is the necessity of the collective growth through which only can the individual thrive and grow. It is however a growth in extension, rather than in intensity i.e. depth and height. This outlook errs in the limitation put upon individuality, precisely identifying it more or less with the "egoism" to which the spirituality of the East objects. This normal individual in its normal development cannot go very far, nor can he lead the others, the society or humanity, to a perfect and supreme fulfilment. The ego-bound normal individuality must transcend itselfexactly the thing that the East teaches; only this transcendence need not mean an abolition of all individuality, but a transformation, a higher integration in a spiritualised, a universalised and divinised individuality.

05.03 - Bypaths of Souls Journey, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The soul in its inner consciousness knows all its evolutionary formations, remembers those of the past and foresees those of the future, when needed, and even determines them essentially. The mind ruling one incarnation cannot recall other incarnations, for it is a product of that incarnation and is meant to guide and control it; physical memory is a function of the brain in the particular body that the soul inhabits for the time. The soul carries a deeper reminiscence which is part and parcel of the self-consciousness inherent in its nature. The physical memory too can partake of this inner reminiscence if it is purified, illumined and organised around the soul as its instrument of expression. Indeed, although the journey of the soul essentially and originally is the flight of the spirit to the Spirit, yet the final consummation is towards an increasing integration of all the external instruments from the highest to the lowest, from the subtlest to the grossest into a harmonised organised whole, reflecting and embodying the Spirit in its purity and totality. The mind, the life and the body too attain a perfectly unified individuality that is the expression of the soul's truth-consciousness and escaping disruption and dissolution partake ultimately of the inherent immortality of the spiritual being.
   ***

05.04 - Of Beauty and Ananda, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Speech is self-expression. It is the organ of self-consciousness. The nature of the speech shows the nature of the self-consciousness. The degree of perfection in utterance measures also the extent to which one is conscious of oneself.
   Beauty is the soul's delight perfectly articulate and organised.

05.15 - Sartrian Freedom, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   "Freedom is not abeing: it is thebeing of man, that is to say, his not-being". A very cryptic mantra. Let us try to unveil the Shekinah. "Being" means "being" i.e. existing, something persisting, continuing in the same condition, something fixed, a status. Freedom is not a thingof that kind, it is movement: even so, it is not a continuous movement. According to Bergson, the true, the ultimate reality is a continuity of urge (lan vital); according to Sartre, however, in line with the trend of modern scientific knowledge, the reality is an assemblage of discrete units of energy, packets or quanta. So freedom is an urge, a spurt (jaillissement):it acts in a disconnected fashion and it is absolute and unconditional. It is veritably the wind that bloweth where it listeth. It has no purpose, no direction, no relation: for all those attributes or definitions would annul its absoluteness. It does not stop or halt or dwell upon, it bursts forth and passes. It does not exist, that is stay: therefore it is non-being. Man's being then consist of a conglomeration (ensemble)of such freedoms. And that is the whole reality ofman, his very essence. We have said that a heavy sense of responsibility hangs upon the .free Purusha: but it appears the Sartrian Purusha is a divided personality. In spite of the sense of responsibility (or because of it?) he acts irresponsibly; for, acting otherwise would not be freedom. So then this essence, the self-consciousness, self-existence, presence in oneself is not a status, a fixed standing entity: it is not a point, even if geometrical; it is, Sartre describes, the jet from one point to another, for, real point there is none: so it is the emptiness behind all concrete realities that is the true reality, asat brahman, unyamto Sartre that is freedom, freedom absolute and ultimate.
   Practically this conception of freedom brings into high relief, makes almost all in all, only one aspect, one character or attri bute of freedom: the abolition of all ties and obligations and relations beyond oneself involving a hollow self-sufficiency. Naturally such an outlook requires against it a complementary one, even if it is not to correct and complete, at least to support and implement it. Sartre too cannot ignore the fact that the free being is not an isolated phenomenon in the world; it exists along with and in the company of others of the same nature and quality. Indeed human society is that in essence, an association of freedoms, although these movements of freedom are camouflaged in appearance and are not recognised by the free persons themselves. The interaction between the free persons, the reflection of oneself in others and the mutual dependence of egos is a constant theme in the novels and plays of Sartre.

05.17 - Evolution or Special Creation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   According to the Yogic or occult view of things, however, the two conceptions that human mind sets against each other need not be and are not contradictory. Indeed both are true and both are factors working out the progress of life. Evolution is a movement upward, the urge of consciousness to grow and expand and rise to a higher and greater articulation: the change follows a scale of degrees. But there comes a point in the progressive march when a change of degree means a change of kind and the phenomenon presents itself as a sudden, unforeseen mutation. This is due to the fact that there happens at the moment, in answer to a last call as it were from below, a descent of consciousness from the higher into the lower. All the grades of being or consciousness are always there in the cosmic infinity, only it is a matter of gradual manifestation in the physical world. The higher scales are kept in the background,the march of life starts from the lowest, the material rung. One by one they manifest or descend, formulate themselvesin the lower as these grow and rise and get ready to receive the descent. The gap or missing link means the irruptionof a new principle or mode of consciousness, the bursting of the cocoon, as it were, at the end of the period of gestation in the previous mode. Thus we can say that in the beginning there was only Matter and Matter was being churned until a point of tension or saturation was reached when Life precipitated and became embodied and evident in Matter. In the same way, out of a concentrated incubation that Life underwent,it brought down Mind from the hidden mind-plane and the vegetable kingdom gave birth to the animal. Latterly when Intelligence and self-consciousness descended, it was Man that appeared on earth.
   Looked at from below, as the lower marches forward and upward, the scene presents itself as Evolution, growth, Nature's gradual unfolding of herself: looked at from above, as the higher seems poised and descends when the time and occasion are ready, creation appears as a series of special intervention. Both movements are facts of Nature and implement each other.

05.22 - Success and its Conditions, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Man's self-confidence is, as I have said, apt to overleap itself; it turns into self-conceit and blind and obstinate complacence. An animal by instinct knows how to remain within its limits and continue to be unfailing in its judgment: it is domestic animals that begin to get muddled in their instinctive movements. With the growth of the mental self-consciousness man loses the sense of his limits and always seeks to exceed himself. And therefore failure and fall have become almost his constant companions. His efforts are not commensurate with his powers. Hence in his case modesty is a great asset and a desideratum. Modesty, we said, is the consciousness of one's limitationnot over-estimating oneself, nor for that matter under-estimating oneself: it is judging exactly what one is.
   That, however, is the case with the normal man with the normal nature. But precisely because of the growth of self-consciousness, man has developed the power to increase his powers: he can extend the boundaries of his capacities and possibilities. He need not confine himself within the dimensions that he naturally possesses or acquires in the normal course of his growth. He can follow an abnormal or extraordinary course of growth, break through his limits and establish contact with the vast and the illimitable and the incalculable, even the very fount and origin- of all power. That is the gift of Yoga, spiritual discipline.
   Yoga brings in a different line and scheme of life. For it is built upon soul-consciousness, upon Divine Nature which means another history of individual destiny. Even then tranquillity and self-confidence are at the basis of a Yogic life also and a new degree of modesty and humility.

10.08 - Consciousness as Freedom, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   I have laid stress on consciousness, but consciousness has three facets or steps. The first is simple consciousness, the next is self-consciousness and the last supra-consciousness. First you become conscious of a thing, next you become conscious that you are conscious of the thing, last something else is conscious in and through your consciousness.
   ***

1.00e - DIVISION E - MOTION ON THE PHYSICAL AND ASTRAL PLANES, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
  a. As the separate realisation of self-consciousness.
  b. As ability to assert that individualism.

1.02 - MAPS OF MEANING - THREE LEVELS OF ANALYSIS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
  modern, comparatively differentiated and acute self-consciousness, do not appear to have been experienced
  precisely as internal in their original form. Rather, they made their appearance as part and parcel of the
  --
  of self-consciousness. The identity of death with the unknown has permanently and incurably destroyed
  any possibility of final habituation to adaptation to, more accurately the world of experience. Man is in

1.02 - The Refusal of the Call, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology
  Willed introversion, in fact, is one of the classic implements of creative genius and can be employed as a deliberate device. It drives the psychic energies into depth and activates the lost con tinent of unconscious infantile and archetypal images. The result, of course; may be a disintegration of consciousness more or less complete (neurosis, psychosis: the plight of spellbound Daphne); but on the other hand, if the personality is able to absorb and integrate the new forces, there will be experienced an almost super-human degree of self-consciousness and masterful control.
  This is a basic principle of the Indian disciplines of yoga. It has been the way, also, of many creative spirits in the West. It can not be described, quite, as an answer to any specific call. Rather, it is a deliberate, terrific refusal to respond to anything but the deepest, highest, richest answer to the as yet unknown demand of some waiting void within: a kind of total strike, or rejection of the offered terms of life, as a result of which some power of trans formation carries the problem to a plane of new magnitudes, where it is suddenly and finally resolved.

1.03 - The Coming of the Subjective Age, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  This he may attempt to do for a time by the power of the critical and analytic reason which has already carried him so far; but not for very long. For in his study of himself and the world he cannot but come face to face with the soul in himself and the soul in the world and find it to be an entity so profound, so complex, so full of hidden secrets and powers that his intellectual reason betrays itself as an insufficient light and a fumbling seeker: it is successfully analytical only of superficialities and of what lies just behind the superficies. The need of a deeper knowledge must then turn him to the discovery of new powers and means within himself. He finds that he can only know himself entirely by becoming actively self-conscious and not merely self-critical, by more and more living in his soul and acting out of it rather than floundering on surfaces, by putting himself into conscious harmony with that which lies behind his superficial mentality and psychology and by enlightening his reason and making dynamic his action through this deeper light and power to which he thus opens. In this process the rationalistic ideal begins to subject itself to the ideal of intuitional knowledge and a deeper self awareness; the utilitarian standard gives way to the aspiration towards self-consciousness and self-realisation; the rule of living according to the manifest laws of physical Nature is replaced by the effort towards living according to the veiled Law and Will and Power active in the life of the world and in the inner and outer life of humanity.
  All these tendencies, though in a crude, initial and ill-developed form, are manifest now in the world and are growing from day to day with a significant rapidity. And their emergence and greater dominance means the transition from the ratio-nalistic and utilitarian period of human development which individualism has created to a greater subjective age of society. The change began by a rapid turning of the current of thought into large and profound movements contradictory of the old intellectual standards, a swift breaking of the old tables. The materialism of the nineteenth century gave place first to a novel and profound vitalism which has taken various forms from Nietzsches theory of the Will to be and Will to Power as the root and law of life to the new pluralistic and pragmatic philosophy which is pluralistic because it has its eye fixed on life rather than on the soul and pragmatic because it seeks to interpret being in the terms of force and action rather than of light and knowledge. These tendencies of thought, which had until yesterday a profound influence on the life and thought of Europe prior to the outbreak of the great War, especially in France and Germany, were not a mere superficial recoil from intellectualism to life and action,although in their application by lesser minds they often assumed that aspect; they were an attempt to read profoundly and live by the Life-Soul of the universe and tended to be deeply psychological and subjective in their method. From behind them, arising in the void created by the discrediting of the old rationalistic intellectualism, there had begun to arise a new Intuitionalism, not yet clearly aware of its own drive and nature, which seeks through the forms and powers of Life for that which is behind Life and sometimes even lays as yet uncertain hands on the sealed doors of the Spirit.
  --
  Meanwhile, the nascent subjectivism preparative of the new age has shown itself not so much in the relations of individuals or in the dominant ideas and tendencies of social development, which are still largely rationalistic and materialistic and only vaguely touched by the deeper subjective tendency, but in the new collective self-consciousness of man in that organic mass of his life which he has most firmly developed in the past, the nation. It is here that it has already begun to produce powerful results whether as a vitalistic or as a psychical subjectivism, and it is here that we shall see most clearly what is its actual drift, its deficiencies, its dangers as well as the true purpose and conditions of a subjective age of humanity and the goal towards which the social cycle, entering this phase, is intended to arrive in its wide revolution.
  ***

1.04 - Body, Soul and Spirit, #Theosophy, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
  In the course of the childhood of a human being, there comes a moment in which, for the first time, he feels himself to be an independent being distinct from the whole of the rest of the world. For persons with finely-strung natures it is a significant experience. The poet Jean Paul says in his autobiography, "I shall never forget the event which took place within me, hitherto narrated to no one, and of which I can give place and time, when I stood present at the birth of my self-consciousness. As a very small child I stood at the door of the house one morning, looking toward the wood pile on my left, when suddenly the inner revelation 'I am an I' came to me like a flash of lightning from heaven and has remained shining ever since. In that moment my ego had seen itself for the first time and forever. Any deception of memory is hardly to be conceived as possible here, for no narrations by outsiders could have
  p. 42
  introduced additions to an occurrence which took place in the holy of holies of a human being, and of which the novelty alone gave permanence to such everyday surroundings." It is known that little children say to themselves, "Charles is good," "Mary wishes to have this." They speak of themselves as if of others because they have not yet become conscious of their independent existence, because the consciousness of the self is not yet born in them. Through self-consciousness man describes himself as an independent being, separate from all others, as "I." In his "I" man brings together all that he experiences as a being in body and soul. Body and soul are the carriers of the ego or "I;" in them it acts. Just as the physical body has its center in the brain, so has the soul its center in the ego. Man is aroused to sensations by impacts from without; feelings manifest themselves as the effects of the outer world; the will relates itself to the outside world in that it realizes itself in external actions. The ego as the peculiar and essential being of man remains quite invisible. Excellently, therefore, does Jean Paul call a man's recognition of his ego
  p. 43

1.04 - THE APPEARANCE OF ANOMALY - CHALLENGE TO THE SHARED MAP, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
  event that is, the development of self-consciousness is capacity to represent death, and to
  understand that the possibility of death is part of the unknown. This contamination of anomaly with the
  --
  the development of self-consciousness (how would I behave in a situation like that?)]. In addition,
  abstraction facilitates communication of morality (instruction in how to behave), by making it unnecessary
  --
  and incontrovertibly demonstrated. To be unaware of nakedness to lack self-consciousness is to be
  much less troubled, but also to be much less. The paradisal world of the child is much less much less
  --
  constantly for that knowledge. His heightened consciousness self-consciousness, really means that he
  can take steps to insure his healthy survival, however (even though he must in consequence worry for the
  --
  becoming with the emergence of consciousness and self-consciousness. 443 It is this equation that allows the
  mythic imagination to place man at the center of the universe, and to draw an analogy between the principle
  --
  form of self-reference to the universal structure. self-consciousness the apprehension of the subject by
  himself appears to have added another.) The modern mind would consider nothing fundamental altered
  --
  The myth of the Fall, Christian or Buddhist, describes the development of self-consciousness as
  voluntary, though pre-arranged, in a sense, by the gods, whose power remains outside human control.
  --
  consequence of the development of self-consciousness (no, an intrinsic aspect of self-consciousness)
  permanently undermines capacity for faith in blind instinctual action:
  --
  sophisticated self-consciousness, which is (innate) capacity for self-reference, provided with content
  through action of culture. Construction of self-consciousness requires elaboration of a self-model;
  extension of the notion of the independent other to the self; internalization of a socially-determined
  --
  on the idea that the appearance of self-consciousness dramatically altered the structure of reality. The
  explicitly religious accept the notion that man and God have been tragically estranged that human actions
  --
  or even insane. Our constantly emerging self-reference (our constantly developing self-consciousness) has
  turned the world of experience into a tragic play:

1.04 - The Discovery of the Nation-Soul, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The parallel is just at every turn because it is more than a parallel; it is a real identity of nature. There is only this difference that the group-soul is much more complex because it has a great number of partly self-conscious mental individuals for the constituents of its physical being instead of an association of merely vital subconscious cells. At first, for this very reason, it seems more crude, primitive and artificial in the forms it takes; for it has a more difficult task before it, it needs a longer time to find itself, it is more fluid and less easily organic. When it does succeed in getting out of the stage of vaguely conscious self-formation, its first definite self-consciousness is objective much more than subjective. And so far as it is subjective, it is apt to be superficial or loose and vague. This objectiveness comes out very strongly in the ordinary emotional conception of the nation which centres round its geographical, its most outward and material aspect, the passion for the land in which we dwell, the land of our fathers, the land of our birth, country, patria, vaterland, janma-bhmi. When we realise that the land is only the shell of the body, though a very living shell indeed and potent in its influences on the nation, when we begin to feel that its more real body is the men and women who compose the nation-unit, a body ever changing, yet always the same like that of the individual man, we are on the way to a truly subjective communal consciousness. For then we have some chance of realising that even the physical being of the society is a subjective power, not a mere objective existence. Much more is it in its inner self a great corporate soul with all the possibilities and dangers of the soul-life.
  The objective view of society has reigned throughout the historical period of humanity in the West; it has been sufficiently strong though not absolutely engrossing in the East. Rulers, people and thinkers alike have understood by their national existence a political status, the extent of their borders, their economic well-being and expansion, their laws, institutions and the working of these things. For this reason political and economic motives have everywhere predominated on the surface and history has been a record of their operations and influence. The one subjective and psychological force consciously admitted and with difficulty deniable has been that of the individual. This predominance is so great that most modern historians and some political thinkers have concluded that objective necessities are by law of Nature the only really determining forces, all else is result or superficial accidents of these forces. Scientific history has been conceived as if it must be a record and appreciation of the environmental motives of political action, of the play of economic forces and developments and the course of institutional evolution. The few who still valued the psychological element have kept their eye fixed on individuals and are not far from conceiving of history as a mass of biographies. The truer and more comprehensive science of the future will see that these conditions only apply to the imperfectly self-conscious period of national development. Even then there was always a greater subjective force working behind individuals, policies, economic movements and the change of institutions; but it worked for the most part subconsciously, more as a subliminal self than as a conscious mind. It is when this subconscious power of the group-soul comes to the surface that nations begin to enter into possession of their subjective selves; they set about getting, however vaguely or imperfectly, at their souls.
  --
  Therefore in nations so circumstanced this tendency of self-finding has been most powerful and has even created in some of them a new type of national movement, as in Ireland and India. This and no other was the root-meaning of Swadeshism in Bengal and of the Irish movement in its earlier less purely political stages. The emergence of Bengal as a sub-nation in India was throughout a strongly subjective movement and in its later development it became very consciously that. The movement of 1905 in Bengal pursued a quite new conception of the nation not merely as a country, but a soul, a psychological, almost a spiritual being and, even when acting from economical and political motives, it sought to dynamise them by this subjective conception and to make them instruments of self-expression rather than objects in themselves. We must not forget, however, that in the first stages these movements followed in their superficial thought the old motives of an objective and mostly political self-consciousness. The East indeed is always more subjective than the West and we can see the subjective tinge even in its political movements whether in Persia, India or China, and even in the very imitative movement of the Japanese resurgence. But it is only recently that this subjectivism has become self-conscious. We may therefore conclude that the conscious and deliberate subjectivism of certain nations was only the sign and precursor of a general change in humanity and has been helped forward by local circumstances, but was not really dependent upon them or in any sense their product.
  This general change is incontestable; it is one of the capital phenomena of the tendencies of national and communal life at the present hour. The conception to which Ireland and India have been the first to give a definite formula, to be ourselves,so different from the impulse and ambition of dependent or unfortunate nations in the past which was rather to become like others,is now more and more a generally accepted motive of national life. It opens the way to great dangers and errors, but it is the essential condition for that which has now become the demand of the Time-Spirit on the human race, that it shall find subjectively, not only in the individual, but in the nation and in the unity of the human race itself, its deeper being, its inner law, its real self and live according to that and no longer by artificial standards. This tendency was preparing itself everywhere and partly coming to the surface before the War, but most prominently, as we have said, in new nations like Germany or in dependent nations like Ireland and India. The shock of the war brought about from its earliest moments an immediate and for the time being a militantemergence of the same deeper self-consciousness everywhere. Crude enough were most of its first manifestations, often of a really barbarous and reactionary crudeness. Especially, it tended to repeat the Teutonic lapse, preparing not only to be oneself, which is entirely right, but to live solely for and to oneself, which, if pushed beyond a certain point, becomes a disastrous error. For it is necessary, if the subjective age of humanity is to produce its best fruits, that the nations should become conscious not only of their own but of each others souls and learn to respect, to help and to profit, not only economically and intellectually but subjectively and spiritually, by each other.
  The great determining force has been the example and the aggression of Germany; the example, because no other nation has so self-consciously, so methodically, so intelligently, and from the external point of view so successfully sought to find, to dynamise, to live itself and make the most of its own power of being; its aggression, because the very nature and declared watchwords of the attack have tended to arouse a defensive self-consciousness in the assailed and forced them to perceive what was the source of this tremendous strength and to perceive too that they themselves must seek consciously an answering strength in the same deeper sources. Germany was for the time the most remarkable present instance of a nation preparing for the subjective stage because it had, in the first place, a certain kind of visionunfortunately intellectual rather than illuminated and the courage to follow itunfortunately again a vital and intellectual rather than a spiritual hardihood,and, secondly, being master of its destinies, was able to order its own life so as to express its self-vision. We must not be misled by appearances into thinking that the strength of Germany was created by Bismarck or directed by the Kaiser Wilhelm II. Rather the appearance of Bismarck was in many respects a misfortune for the growing nation because his rude and powerful hand precipitated its subjectivity into form and action at too early a stage; a longer period of incubation might have produced results less disastrous to itself, if less violently stimulative to humanity. The real source of this great subjective force which has been so much disfigured in its objective action, was not in Germanys statesmen and soldiers for the most part poor enough types of men but came from her great philosophers, Kant, Hegel, Fichte, Nietzsche, from her great thinker and poet Goethe, from her great musicians, Beethoven and Wagner, and from all in the German soul and temperament which they represented. A nation whose master achievement has lain almost entirely in the two spheres of philosophy and music, is clearly predestined to lead in the turn to subjectivism and to produce a profound result for good or evil on the beginnings of a subjective age.
  This was one side of the predestination of Germany; the other is to be found in her scholars, educationists, scientists, organisers. It was the industry, the conscientious diligence, the fidelity to ideas, the honest and painstaking spirit of work for which the nation has been long famous. A people may be highly gifted in the subjective capacities, and yet if it neglects to cultivate this lower side of our complex nature, it will fail to build that bridge between the idea and imagination and the world of facts, between the vision and the force, which makes realisation possible; its higher powers may become a joy and inspiration to the world, but it will never take possession of its own world until it has learned the humbler lesson. In Germany the bridge was there, though it ran mostly through a dark tunnel with a gulf underneath; for there was no pure transmission from the subjective mind of the thinkers and singers to the objective mind of the scholars and organisers. The misapplication by Treitschke of the teaching of Nietzsche to national and international uses which would have profoundly disgusted the philosopher himself, is an example of this obscure transmission. But still a transmission there was. For more than a half-century Germany turned a deep eye of subjective introspection on herself and things and ideas in search of the truth of her own being and of the world, and for another half-century a patient eye of scientific research on the objective means for organising what she had or thought she had gained. And something was done, something indeed powerful and enormous, but also in certain directions, not in all, misshapen and disconcerting. Unfortunately, those directions were precisely the very central lines on which to go wrong is to miss the goal.

1.05 - Adam Kadmon, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
   are unfamiliar with the general conceptions held in mystic- ism as very strange indeed. But the idea of an inner man using a mind and body as instruments for the obtaining of experience and thus self-consciousness is inherent in every mystical system that has seen the light of the Sun. The classifications of the nature of man used by the various schools of Mysticism are tabulated on the opposite chart, using the ten Sephiros as the basis for comparison.
  In their analysis of man, the Qabalists found that hand in hand with the physical body man had an automatic- or habit-forming or desire-consciousness, which gave him im- petus and volition in certain directions. It took care of the functions of his organism to which conscious attention was seldom directed, such as the circulation of the blood, the beating of the heart, and the involuntary motions of the diaphragm resulting in the inspiration and expiration of breath. They also noted the faculty of reason and criticism, the power whereby a man proceeds from premisses to con- clusion. And above and beyond this w r as the Spiritual entity who used this body, who used this desire and rational consciousness.

1.05 - Knowledge by Aquaintance and Knowledge by Description, #The Problems of Philosophy, #Bertrand Russell, #Philosophy
  I desire food, I may be aware of my desire for food; thus 'my desiring food' is an object with which I am acquainted. Similarly we may be aware of our feeling pleasure or pain, and generally of the events which happen in our minds. This kind of acquaintance, which may be called self-consciousness, is the source of all our knowledge of mental things.
  It is obvious that it is only what goes on in our own minds that can be thus known immediately. What goes on in the minds of others is known to us through our perception of their bodies, that is, through the sense-data in us which are associated with their bodies. But for our acquaintance with the contents of our own minds, we should be unable to imagine the minds of others, and therefore we could never arrive at the knowledge that they have minds. It seems natural to suppose that self-consciousness is one of the things that distinguish men from animals: animals, we may suppose, though they have acquaintance with sense-data, never become aware of this acquaintance. I do not mean that they _doubt_ whether they exist, but that they have never become conscious of the fact that they have sensations and feelings, nor therefore of the fact that they, the subjects of their sensations and feelings, exist.
  We have spoken of acquaintance with the contents of our minds as

1.05 - The Destiny of the Individual, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  17:The liberation of the individual soul is therefore the keynote of the definitive divine action; it is the primary divine necessity and the pivot on which all else turns. It is the point of Light at which the intended complete self-manifestation in the Many begins to emerge. But the liberated soul extends its perception of unity horizontally as well as vertically. Its unity with the transcendent One is incomplete without its unity with the cosmic Many. And that lateral unity translates itself by a multiplication, a reproduction of its own liberated state at other points in the Multiplicity. The divine soul reproduces itself in similar liberated souls as the animal reproduces itself in similar bodies. Therefore, whenever even a single soul is liberated, there is a tendency to an extension and even to an outburst of the same divine self-consciousness in other individual souls of our terrestrial humanity and, - who knows? - perhaps even beyond the terrestrial consciousness. Where shall we fix the limit of that extension? Is it altogether a legend which says of the Buddha that as he stood on the threshold of Nirvana, of the Non-Being, his soul turned back and took the vow never to make the irrevocable crossing so long as there was a single being upon earth undelivered from the knot of the suffering, from the bondage of the ego?
  18:But we can attain to the highest without blotting ourselves out from the cosmic extension. Brahman preserves always Its two terms of liberty within and of formation without, of expression and of freedom from the expression. We also, being That, can attain to the same divine self-possession. The harmony of the two tendencies is the condition of all life that aims at being really divine. Liberty pursued by exclusion of the thing exceeded leads along the path of negation to the refusal of that which God has accepted. Activity pursued by absorption in the act and the energy leads to an inferior affirmation and the denial of the Highest. But what God combines and synthetises, wherefore should man insist on divorcing? To be perfect as He is perfect is the condition of His integral attainment.

1.05 - THE HOSTILE BROTHERS - ARCHETYPES OF RESPONSE TO THE UNKNOWN, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
  which is to say: development of self-consciousness tainted everything with death, but self-consciousness is
  contained within a global understanding that is still exceptionally limited in its scope. The present, as
  --
  increase in power makes our internal integration and expanded self-consciousness that much more
  necessary.
  --
  light of self-consciousness was a higher spirit than the unconscious demi-urge who had created everything,
  in the beginning. This idea was predicated upon Gnostic recognition that a fall from paradise, so to speak
  --
  eradication of existence is one logical evil consequence of heightened self-consciousness. It is not,
  however, the only consequence, and may not even be the most subtle. Far more efficient far more hidden
  --
  of self-consciousness, which has as its mythic consequence (has as its virtual equivalent) heightened
  awareness of human limitation. This awareness is manifested in shame, and has been expressed
  --
  eternal consequence of self-consciousness is therefore the expulsion from paradise in its maternal and
  patriarchal forms. But such a fall is a step on the way to the true paradise is a step towards adoption of
  --
  arrested individuals sense of self-consciousness, of nakedness and vulnerability. This leaves him
  unbearably anxious, tremendously uncertain, miserably subject to a new and uncertain world to a new
  --
  sickness, endemic to mankind the consequence of unbearable self-consciousness, apprehension of destiny
  in suffering and limitation, and pathological refusal to face the consequences thereof.
  --
  tragic self-consciousness will be suppressed, with intrapsychic and social pathology as the inevitable
  result. If the individual strives primarily for material security, or social acceptance, rather than for the
  --
   self-consciousness. It might be said: emergence of the limited self-consciousness symbolically represented
  in myths of the Fall constituted grounds for the descent of man. The alchemical philosophers meditating
  --
  perfection came to realize that increased self-consciousness might constitute recompense for expulsion
  from Paradise. But identification of all competing desires meant clear-headed recognition of the truly tragic
  --
  The myth of the fall from paradise describes the development of human self-consciousness as a great
  tragedy as the greatest conceivable anomaly as an event that permanently altered the structure of the

1.06 - Dhyana and Samadhi, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
  But it does not end here. There is a still higher plane upon which the mind can work. It can go beyond consciousness. Just as unconscious work is beneath consciousness, so there is another work which is above consciousness, and which also is not accompanied with the feeling of egoism. The feeling of egoism is only on the middle plane. When the mind is above or below that line, there is no feeling of "I", and yet the mind works. When the mind goes beyond this line of self-consciousness, it is called Samdhi or superconsciousness. How, for instance, do we know that a man in Samadhi has not gone below consciousness, has not degenerated instead of going higher? In both cases the works are unaccompanied with egoism. The answer is, by the effects, by the results of the work, we know that which is below, and that which is above. When a man goes into deep sleep, he enters a plane beneath consciousness. He works the body all the time, he breathes, he moves the body, perhaps, in his sleep, without any accompanying feeling of ego; he is unconscious, and when he returns from his sleep, he is the same man who went into it. The sum total of the knowledge which he had before he went into the sleep remains the same; it does not increase at all. No enlightenment comes. But when a man goes into Samadhi, if he goes into it a fool, he comes out a sage.
  What makes the difference? From one state a man comes out the very same man that he went in, and from another state the man comes out enlightened, a sage, a prophet, a saint, his whole character changed, his life changed, illumined. These are the two effects. Now the effects being different, the causes must be different. As this illumination with which a man comes back from Samadhi is much higher than can be got from unconsciousness, or much higher than can be got by reasoning in a conscious state, it must, therefore, be superconsciousness, and Samadhi is called the superconscious state.

1.06 - Man in the Universe, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  5:The universe and the individual are the two essential appearances into which the Unknowable descends and through which it has to be approached; for other intermediate collectivities are born only of their interaction. This descent of the supreme Reality is in its nature a self-concealing; and in the descent there are successive levels, in the concealing successive veils. Necessarily, the revelation takes the form of an ascent; and necessarily also the ascent and the revelation are both progressive. For each successive level in the descent of the Divine is to man a stage in an ascension; each veil that hides the unknown God becomes for the God-lover and God-seeker an instrument of His unveiling. Out of the rhythmic slumber of material Nature unconscious of the Soul and the Idea that maintain the ordered activities of her energy even in her dumb and mighty material trance, the world struggles into the more quick, varied and disordered rhythm of Life labouring on the verges of self-consciousness. Out of Life it struggles upward into Mind in which the unit becomes awake to itself and its world, and in that awakening the universe gains the leverage it required for its supreme work, it gains self-conscious individuality. But Mind takes up the work to continue, not to complete it. It is a labourer of acute but limited intelligence who takes the confused materials offered by Life and, having improved, adapted, varied, classified according to its power, hands them over to the supreme Artist of our divine manhood. That Artist dwells in supermind; for supermind is superman. Therefore our world has yet to climb beyond Mind to a higher principle, a higher status, a higher dynamism in which universe and individual become aware of and possess that which they both are and therefore stand explained to each other, in harmony with each other, unified.
  6:The disorders of life and mind cease by discerning the secret of a more perfect order than the physical. Matter below life and mind contains in itself the balance between a perfect poise of tranquillity and the action of an immeasurable energy, but does not possess that which it contains. Its peace wears the dull mask of an obscure inertia, a sleep of unconsciousness or rather of a drugged and imprisoned consciousness. Driven by a force which is its real self but whose sense it cannot yet seize nor share, it has not the awakened joy of its own harmonious energies.

1.06 - MORTIFICATION, NON-ATTACHMENT, RIGHT LIVELIHOOD, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  In the world, when people call anyone simple, they generally mean a foolish, ignorant, credulous person. But real simplicity, so far from being foolish, is almost sublime. All good men like and admire it, are conscious of sinning against it, observe it in others and know what it involves; and yet they could not precisely define it. I should say that simplicity is an uprightness of soul which prevents self-consciousness. It is not the same as sincerity, which is a much humbler virtue. Many people are sincere who are not simple. They say nothing but what they believe to be true, and do not aim at appearing anything but what they are. But they are for ever thinking about themselves, weighing their every word and thought, and dwelling upon themselves in apprehension of having done too much or too little. These people are sincere but they are not simple. They are not at their ease with others, nor others with them. There is nothing easy, frank, unrestrained or natural about them. One feels that one would like less admirable people better, who were not so stiff.
  To be absorbed in the world around and never turn a thought within, as is the blind condition of some who are carried away by what is pleasant and tangible, is one extreme as opposed to simplicity. And to be self-absorbed in all matters, whether it be duty to God or man, is the other extreme, which makes a person wise in his own conceitreserved, self-conscious, uneasy at the least thing which disturbs his inward self-complacency. Such false wisdom, in spite of its solemnity, is hardly less vain and foolish than the folly of those who plunge headlong into worldly pleasures. The one is intoxicated by his outward surroundings, the other by what he believes himself to be doing inwardly; but both are in a state of intoxication, and the last is a worse state than the first, because it seems to be wise, though it is not really, and so people do not try to be cured. Real simplicity lies in a juste milieu equally free from thoughtlessness and affectation, in which the soul is not overwhelmed by externals, so as to be unable to reflect, nor yet given up to the endless refinements, which self-consciousness induces. That soul which looks where it is going without losing time arguing over every step, or looking back perpetually, possesses true simplicity. Such simplicity is indeed a great treasure. How shall we attain to it? I would give all I possess for it; it is the costly pearl of Holy Scripture.
  The first step, then, is for the soul to put away outward things and look within so as to know its own real interest; so far all is right and natural; thus much is only a wise self-love, which seeks to avoid the intoxication of the world.
  In the next step the soul must add the contemplation of God, whom it fears, to that of self. This is a faint approach to the real wisdom, but the soul is still greatly self-absorbed: it is not satisfied with fearing God; it wants to be certain that it does fear him and fears lest it fear him not, going round in a perpetual circle of self-consciousness. All this restless dwelling on self is very far from the peace and freedom of real love; but that is yet in the distance; the soul must needs go through a season of trial, and were it suddenly plunged into a state of rest, it would not know how to use it.
  The third step is that, ceasing from a restless self-contemplation, the soul begins to dwell upon God instead, and by degrees forgets itself in Him. It becomes full of Him and ceases to feed upon self. Such a soul is not blinded to its own faults or indifferent to its own errors; it is more conscious of them than ever, and increased light shows them in plainer form, but this self-knowledge comes from God, and therefore it is not restless or uneasy.

1.06 - The Objective and Subjective Views of Life, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Subjectivism proceeds from within and regards everything from the point of view of a containing and developing self-consciousness. The law here is within ourselves; life is a self-creating process, a growth and development at first subconscious, then half-conscious and at last more and more fully conscious of that which we are potentially and hold within ourselves; the principle of its progress is an increasing self-recognition, self-realisation and a resultant self-shaping. Reason and will are only effective movements of the self, reason a process in self-recognition, will a force for self-affirmation and self-shaping. Moreover, reason and intellectual will are only a part of the means by which we recognise and realise ourselves. Subjectivism tends to take a large and complex view of our nature and being and to recognise many powers of knowledge, many forces of effectuation. Even, we see it in its first movement away from the external and objective method discount and belittle the importance of the work of the reason and assert the supremacy of the life-impulse or the essential Will-to-be in opposition to the claims of the intellect or else affirm some deeper power of knowledge, called nowadays the intuition, which sees things in the whole, in their truth, in their profundities and harmonies while intellectual reason breaks up, falsifies, affirms superficial appearances and harmonises only by a mechanical adjustment. But substantially we can see that what is meant by this intuition is the self-consciousness feeling, perceiving, grasping in its substance and aspects rather than analysing in its mechanism its own truth and nature and powers. The whole impulse of subjectivism is to get at the self, to live in the self, to see by the self, to live out the truth of the self internally and externally, but always from an internal initiation and centre.
  But still there is the question of the truth of the self, what it is, where is its real abiding-place; and here subjectivism has to deal with the same factors as the objective view of life and existence. We may concentrate on the individual life and consciousness as the self and regard its power, freedom, increasing light and satisfaction and joy as the object of living and thus arrive at a subjective individualism. We may, on the other hand, lay stress on the group consciousness, the collective self; we may see man only as an expression of this group-self necessarily incomplete in his individual or separate being, complete only by that larger entity, and we may wish to subordinate the life of the individual man to the growing power, efficiency, knowledge, happiness, self-fulfilment of the race or even sacrifice it and consider it as nothing except in so far as it lends itself to the life and growth of the community or the kind. We may claim to exercise a righteous oppression on the individual and teach him intellectually and practically that he has no claim to exist, no right to fulfil himself except in his relations to the collectivity. These alone then are to determine his thought, action and existence and the claim of the individual to have a law of his own being, a law of his own nature which he has a right to fulfil and his demand for freedom of thought involving necessarily the freedom to err and for freedom of action involving necessarily the freedom to stumble and sin may be regarded as an insolence and a chimera. The collective self-consciousness will then have the right to invade at every point the life of the individual, to refuse to it all privacy and apartness, all self-concentration and isolation, all independence and self-guidance and determine everything for it by what it conceives to be the best thought and highest will and rightly dominant feeling, tendency, sense of need, desire for self-satisfaction of the collectivity.
  But also we may enlarge the idea of the self and, as objective Science sees a universal force of Nature which is the one reality and of which everything is the process, we may come subjectively to the realisation of a universal Being or Existence which fulfils itself in the world and the individual and the group with an impartial regard for all as equal powers of its self-manifestation. This is obviously the self-knowledge which is most likely to be right, since it most comprehensively embraces and accounts for the various aspects of the world-process and the eternal tendencies of humanity. In this view neither the separate growth of the individual nor the all-absorbing growth of the group can be the ideal, but an equal, simultaneous and, as far as may be, parallel development of both, in which each helps to fulfil the other. Each being has his own truth of independent self-realisation and his truth of self-realisation in the life of others and should feel, desire, help, participate more and more, as he grows in largeness and power, in the harmonious and natural growth of all the individual selves and all the collective selves of the one universal Being. These two, when properly viewed, would not be separate, opposite or really conflicting lines of tendency, but the same impulse of the one common existence, companion movements separating only to return upon each other in a richer and larger unity and mutual consequence.

1.070 - The Seven Stages of Perfection, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
  As we have had occasion to study, these tendencies to object perception are deep-seated and they can be present sometimes actively present even when they are apparently imperceptible. The conscious non-apprehension of an object is not necessarily an indication of the absence of this tendency to object perception in the deeper layers of ones personality. The urges of the individual are nothing but the building bricks of the individuality itself. What is known as self-consciousness, or individuality, is a pattern or shape taken by this tendency to object perception. As long as the individuality-consciousness persists, even in its minimum formation, one can safely conclude that these tendencies are still there, because when they are absent, the individuality also vanishes, just as when we pull out every brick from the house, the house itself is not there.
  This body is the house. This individuality is the vehicle that has been manufactured by these tendencies to object-perception, and they themselves form the substance of this body-mind complex. And, the presence of this vehicle is simultaneous with the attachment of consciousness to that vehicle; this is the bondage of the soul. Thus, it is hard for one to attain salvation, because it is the abolition of individuality itself a total extinction of personality that is known as nirvana, the complete vanishing from sight of the very possibility of objectivity. The blowing out of a lamp is what is actually meant by nirvana. The lamp of world-consciousness the light with which we see objects is blown out completely, and there is the return of the spirit to its own pristine purity and status.
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  Likewise the forces of nature, which are really what are meant by the powers of nature, cannot enter into the personality of an individual on account of the very presence of individuality. What we call individuality is nothing but the closed house of the asmita, where every avenue of entry of cosmic force is closed completely due to the intensity of self-consciousness. One is so intensely aware of oneself as an individual that it is impossible for cosmic forces to enter that person, so that one begins to rot from within due to this ego, and undergoes intense suffering which is the direct outcome of the absence of freedom which is equivalent to the harmony of oneself with nature.
  The stages of yoga that are going to be mentioned the limbs of yoga as they are called are the stages of the mastery which one gains over phenomena, external and internal, by a systematic ascent to greater and greater degrees of harmony. Thus, yoga is, in a sense, a system of harmony. The Bhagavadgita has put it very beautifully: samatva yoga ucyate (B.G. II.48).

1.08 - The Synthesis of Movement, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  Why must it be that this brief hour should be lost by so great a number and the inestimable privilege of being and of self-consciousness should for the most part be ignored? For so the being passes without seeing it the great half-opened gate and returns towards the night in which ignorant desires lose themselves.
  Who can say when the propitious opportunity will return for those who have once neglected it?

11.08 - Body-Energy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   There is however a basic preliminary necessity, a preparatory condition: the first essential condition under which the body can be conscious of itself is its freedom, its absolute freedom. The body must be liberated wholly and entirely, it must feel its perfect freedom. As at present it is a slave: it never knows its own will, it is always under the orders of either the vital or the mind or both. Under the control of this dual mastersa cruel diarchy the body has lost all its independent movements. The activities, almost all, of the present body are not really its own, they are expressions of an imposed will. In order to have and to be aware of its own will the body must be freed from its alien imposition and as soon as it gains its freedom, it will know itself, learn itself, learn its own movements. It will gradually shred off all the wrong and distorted movements which form its present habits. We shall find that in itself the body is a sane entity and it is not in need of many things that have been suggested to it and instilled into it by forces that are outside it, almost foreign to it, the mental and the vital forces. The liberation will bring to it automatically the awareness of its own self, it will become, that is to say, conscious of itself and this consciousness will bring with it a pure and fresh energy which is that of its true self. As in the case of a subject nation the very fact of liberation brings to it the energy of self-consciousness and an exhilarating delight in the expression of the newfound selfhood, even as also in the case of the individual human being when he is freed from serfdom and slavery and bondages, he attains, realises the dignity of self-consciousness and self-power, even so the material body too becomes illumined with its freedom and rejoices in its power and energy to express its own truth. The first effect of freedom after a long subjugation is likely to be a spell of erraticism, but that is sure to die away if there is a corrective central will.
   The body-movements in the animal are more au thentic and truthful for they are not subsidised and suborned by the vital and mental injunctions, and they are more ordered and controlled, not subject to idiosyncrasies that sway the human character. They are more free and more natural: the same essential freedom and au thenticity and purity shall belong to the body natural of the highest mode of being and consciousness.

1.10 - GRACE AND FREE WILL, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  Defined in psychological terms, grace is something other than our self-conscious personal self, by which we are helped. We have experience of three kinds of such helpsanimal grace, human grace and spiritual grace. Animal grace comes when we are living in full accord with our own nature on the biological levelnot abusing our bodies by excess, not interfering with the workings of our indwelling animal intelligence by conscious cravings and aversions, but living wholesomely and laying ourselves open to the virtue of the sun and the spirit of the air. The reward of being thus in harmony with Tao or the Logos in its physical and physiological aspects is a sense of well-being, an awareness of life as good, not for any reason, but just because it is life. There is no question, when we are in a condition of animal grace, of propter vitam vivendi perdere causas; for in this state there is no distinction between the reasons for living and life itself. Life, like virtue, is then its own reward. But, of course, the fulness of animal grace is reserved for animals. Mans nature is such that he must live a self-conscious life in time, not in a blissful sub-rational eternity on the hither side of good and evil. Consequently animal grace is something that he knows only spasmodically in an occasional holiday from self-consciousness, or as an accompaniment to other states, in which life is not its own reward but has to be lived for a reason outside itself.
  Human grace comes to us either from persons, or from social groups, or from our own wishes, hopes and imaginings projected outside ourselves and persisting somehow in the psychic medium in a state of what may be called second-hand objectivity. We have all had experience of the different types of human grace. There is, for example, the grace which, during childhood, comes from mother, father, nurse or beloved teacher. At a later stage we experience the grace of friends; the grace of men and women morally better and wiser than ourselves; the grace of the guru, or spiritual director. Then there is the grace which comes to us because of our attachment to country, party, church or other social organizationa grace which has helped even the feeblest and most timid individuals to achieve what, without it, would have been the impossible. And finally there is the grace which we derive from our ideals, whether low or high, whether conceived of in abstract terms or bodied forth in imaginary personifications. To this last type, it would seem, belong many of the graces experienced by the pious adherents of the various religions. The help received by those who devotedly adore or pray to some personal saint, deity or Avatar is often, we may guess, not a genuinely spiritual grace, but a human grace, coming back to the worshipper from the vortex of psychic power set up by repeated acts (his own and other peoples) of faith, yearning and imagination.
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  Chinese verbs are tenseless. This statement as to a hypothetical event in history refers at the same time to the present and the future. It means simply this: that with the rise of self-consciousness, animal grace is no longer sufficient for the conduct of life, and must be supplemented by conscious and deliberate choices between right and wrongchoices which have to be made in the light of a clearly formulated ethical code. But, as the Taoist sages are never tired of repeating, codes of ethics and deliberate choices made by the surface will are only a second best. The individualized will and the superficial intelligence are to be used for the purpose of recapturing the old animal relation to Tao, but on a higher, spiritual level. The goal is perpetual inspiration from sources beyond the personal self; and the means are human kindness and morality, leading to the charity, which is unitive knowledge of Tao, as at once the Ground and Logos.
  Lord, Thou has given me my being of such a nature that it can continually make itself more able to receive thy grace and goodness. And this power, which I have of Thee, wherein I have a living image of thine almighty power, is free will. By this I can either enlarge or restrict my capacity for Thy grace.

1.11 - Delight of Existence - The Problem, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  1:BUT EVEN if we accept this pure Existence, this Brahman, this Sat as the absolute beginning, end and continent of things and in Brahman an inherent self-consciousness inseparable from its being and throwing itself out as a force of movement of consciousness which is creative of forces, forms and worlds, we have yet no answer to the question "Why should Brahman, perfect, absolute, infinite, needing nothing, desiring nothing, at all throw out force of consciousness to create in itself these worlds of forms?" For we have put aside the solution that it is compelled by its own nature of Force to create, obliged by its own potentiality of movement and formation to move into forms. It is true that it has this potentiality, but it is not limited, bound or compelled by it; it is free. If, then, being free to move or remain eternally still, to throw itself into forms or retain the potentiality of form in itself, it indulges its power of movement and formation, it can be only for one reason, for delight.
  2:This primary, ultimate and eternal Existence, as seen by the Vedantins, is not merely bare existence, or a conscious existence whose consciousness is crude force or power; it is a conscious existence the very term of whose being, the very term of whose consciousness is bliss. As in absolute existence there can be no nothingness, no night of inconscience, no deficiency, that is to say, no failure of Force, - for if there were any of these things, it would not be absolute, - so also there can be no suffering, no negation of delight. Absoluteness of conscious existence is illimitable bliss of conscious existence; the two are only different phrases for the same thing. All illimitableness, all infinity, all absoluteness is pure delight. Even our relative humanity has this experience that all dissatisfaction means a limit, an obstacle, - satisfaction comes by realisation of something withheld, by the surpassing of the limit, the overcoming of the obstacle. This is because our original being is the absolute in full possession of its infinite and illimitable self-consciousness and self-power; a self-possession whose other name is self-delight. And in proportion as the relative touches upon that self-possession, it moves towards satisfaction, touches delight.
  3:The self-delight of Brahman is not limited, however, by the still and motionless possession of its absolute self-being. Just as its force of consciousness is capable of throwing itself into forms infinitely and with an endless variation, so also its self-delight is capable of movement, of variation, of revelling in that infinite flux and mutability of itself represented by numberless teeming universes. To loose forth and enjoy this infinite movement and variation of its self-delight is the object of its extensive or creative play of Force.
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  16:We must first make it clear to ourselves that just as when we speak of universal consciousness we mean something different from, more essential and wider than the waking mental consciousness of the human being, so also when we speak of universal delight of existence we mean something different from, more essential and wider than the ordinary emotional and sensational pleasure of the individual human creature. Pleasure, joy and delight, as man uses the words, are limited and occasional movements which depend on certain habitual causes and emerge, like their opposites pain and grief which are equally limited and occasional movements, from a background other than themselves. Delight of being is universal, illimitable and self-existent, not dependent on particular causes, the background of all backgrounds, from which pleasure, pain and other more neutral experiences emerge. When delight of being seeks to realise itself as delight of becoming, it moves in the movement of force and itself takes different forms of movement of which pleasure and pain are positive and negative currents. Subconscient in Matter, superconscient beyond Mind this delight seeks in Mind and Life to realise itself by emergence in the becoming, in the increasing self-consciousness of the movement. Its first phenomena are dual and impure, move between the poles of pleasure and pain, but it aims at its self-revelation in the purity of a supreme delight of being which is self-existent and independent of objects and causes. Just as Sachchidananda moves towards the realisation of the universal existence in the individual and of the form-exceeding consciousness in the form of body and mind, so it moves towards the realisation of universal, self-existent and objectless delight in the flux of particular experiences and objects. Those objects we now seek as stimulating causes of a transient pleasure and satisfaction; free, possessed of self, we shall not seek but shall possess them as reflectors rather than causes of a delight which eternally exists.
  17:In the egoistic human being, the mental person emergent out of the dim shell of matter, delight of existence is neutral, semilatent, still in the shadow of the subconscious, hardly more than a concealed soil of plenty covered by desire with a luxuriant growth of poisonous weeds and hardly less poisonous flowers, the pains and pleasures of our egoistic existence. When the divine conscious-force working secretly in us has devoured these growths of desire, when in the image of the Rig Veda the fire of God has burnt up the shoots of earth, that which is concealed at the roots of these pains and pleasures, their cause and secret being, the sap of delight in them, will emerge in new forms not of desire, but of self-existent satisfaction which will replace mortal pleasure by the Immortal's ecstasy. And this transformation is possible because these growths of sensation and emotion are in their essential being, the pains no less than the pleasures, that delight of existence which they seek but fail to reveal, - fail because of division, ignorance of self and egoism.

1.11 - The Reason as Governor of Life, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The root of the difficulty is this that at the very basis of all our life and existence, internal and external, there is something on which the intellect can never lay a controlling hold, the Absolute, the Infinite. Behind everything in life there is an Absolute, which that thing is seeking after in its own way; everything finite is striving to express an infinite which it feels to be its real truth. Moreover, it is not only each class, each type, each tendency in Nature that is thus impelled to strive after its own secret truth in its own way, but each individual brings in his own variations. Thus there is not only an Absolute, an Infinite in itself which governs its own expression in many forms and tendencies, but there is also a principle of infinite potentiality and variation quite baffling to the reasoning intelligence; for the reason deals successfully only with the settled and the finite. In man this difficulty reaches its acme. For not only is mankind unlimited in potentiality; not only is each of its powers and tendencies seeking after its own absolute in its own way and therefore naturally restless under any rigid control by the reason; but in each man their degrees, methods, combinations vary, each man belongs not only to the common humanity, but to the Infinite in himself and is therefore unique. It is because this is the reality of our existence that the intellectual reason and the intelligent will cannot deal with life as its sovereign, even though they may be at present our supreme instruments and may have been in our evolution supremely important and helpful. The reason can govern, but only as a minister, imperfectly, or as a general arbiter and giver of suggestions which are not really supreme commands, or as one channel of the sovereign authority, because that hidden Power acts at present not directly but through many agents and messengers. The real sovereign is another than the reasoning intelligence. Mans impulse to be free, master of Nature in himself and his environment cannot be really fulfilled until his self-consciousness has grown beyond the rational mentality, become aware of the true sovereign and either identified itself with him or entered into constant communion with his supreme will and knowledge.
    The ordinary mind in man is not truly the thinking mind proper, it is a life-mind, a vital mind as we may call it, which has learned to think and even to reason but for its own ends and on its own lines, not on those of a true mind of knowledge.

1.12 - Delight of Existence - The Solution, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  1:IN THIS conception of an inalienable underlying delight of existence of which all outward or surface sensations are a positive, negative or neutral play, waves and foamings of that infinite deep, we arrive at the true solution of the problem we are examining. The self of things is an infinite indivisible existence; of that existence the essential nature or power is an infinite imperishable force of self-conscious being; and of that self-consciousness the essential nature or knowledge of itself is, again, an infinite inalienable delight of being. In formlessness and in all forms, in the eternal awareness of infinite and indivisible being and in the multiform appearances of finite division this self-existence preserves perpetually its self-delight. As in the apparent inconscience of Matter our soul, growing out of its bondage to its own superficial habit and particular mode of self-conscious existence, discovers that infinite Conscious-Force constant, immobile, brooding, so in the apparent non-sensation of Matter it comes to discover and attune itself to an infinite conscious Delight imperturbable, ecstatic, all-embracing. This delight is its own delight, this self is its own self in all; but to our ordinary view of self and things which awakes and moves only upon surfaces, it remains hidden, profound, subconscious. And as it is within all forms, so it is within all experiences whether pleasant, painful or neutral. There too hidden, profound, subconscious, it is that which enables and compels things to remain in existence. It is the reason of that clinging to existence, that overmastering will-to-be, translated vitally as the instinct of self-preservation, physically as the imperishability of matter, mentally as the sense of immortality which attends the formed existence through all its phases of self-development and of which even the occasional impulse of self-destruction is only a reverse form, an attraction to other state of being and a consequent recoil from present state of being. Delight is existence, Delight is the secret of creation, Delight is the root of birth, Delight is the cause of remaining in existence, Delight is the end of birth and that into which creation ceases. "From Ananda" says the Upanishad "all existences are born, by Ananda they remain in being and increase, to Ananda they depart."
  2:As we look at these three aspects of essential Being, one in reality, triune to our mental view, separable only in appearance, in the phenomena of the divided consciousness, we are able to put in their right place the divergent formulae of the old philosophies so that they unite and become one, ceasing from their agelong controversy. For if we regard world-existence only in its appearances and only in its relation to pure, infinite, indivisible, immutable Existence, we are entitled to regard it, describe it and realise it as Maya. Maya in its original sense meant a comprehending and containing consciousness capable of embracing, measuring and limiting and therefore formative; it is that which outlines, measures out, moulds forms in the formless, psychologises and seems to make knowable the Unknowable, geometrises and seems to make measurable the limitless. Later the word came from its original sense of knowledge, skill, intelligence to acquire a pejorative sense of cunning, fraud or illusion, and it is in the figure of an enchantment or illusion that it is used by the philosophical systems.
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  16:Such then is the view of the universe which arises out of the integral Vedantic affirmation. An infinite, indivisible existence all-blissful in its pure self-consciousness moves out of its fundamental purity into the varied play of Force that is consciousness, into the movement of Prakriti which is the play of Maya. The delight of its existence is at first self-gathered, absorbed, subconscious in the basis of the physical universe; then emergent in a great mass of neutral movement which is not yet what we call sensation; then further emergent with the growth of mind and ego in the triple vibration of pain, pleasure and indifference originating from the limitation of the force of consciousness in the form and from its exposure to shocks of the universal Force which it finds alien to it and out of harmony with its own measure and standard; finally, the conscious emergence of the full Sachchidananda in its creations by universality, by equality, by self-possession and conquest of Nature. This is the course and movement of the world.
  17:If it then be asked why the One Existence should take delight in such a movement, the answer lies in the fact that all possibilities are inherent in Its infinity and that the delight of existence - in its mutable becoming, not in its immutable being, - lies precisely in the variable realisation of its possibilities. And the possibility worked out here in the universe of which we are a part, begins from the concealment of Sachchidananda in that which seems to be its own opposite and its self-finding even amid the terms of that opposite. Infinite being loses itself in the appearance of non-being and emerges in the appearance of a finite Soul; infinite consciousness loses itself in the appearance of a vast indeterminate inconscience and emerges in the appearance of a superficial limited consciousness; infinite selfsustaining Force loses itself in the appearance of a chaos of atoms and emerges in the appearance of the insecure balance of a world; infinite Delight loses itself in the appearance of an insensible Matter and emerges in the appearance of a discordant rhythm of varied pain, pleasure and neutral feeling, love, hatred and indifference; infinite unity loses itself in the appearance of a chaos of multiplicity and emerges in a discord of forces and beings which seek to recover unity by possessing, dissolving and devouring each other. In this creation the real Sachchidananda has to emerge. Man, the individual, has to become and to live as a universal being; his limited mental consciousness has to widen to the superconscient unity in which each embraces all; his narrow heart has to learn the infinite embrace and replace its lusts and discords by universal love and his restricted vital being to become equal to the whole shock of the universe upon it and capable of universal delight; his very physical being has to know itself as no separate entity but as one with and sustaining in itself the whole flow of the indivisible Force that is all things; his whole nature has to reproduce in the individual the unity, the harmony, the oneness-in-all of the supreme Existence-Consciousness-Bliss.

1.12 - The Office and Limitations of the Reason, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Meanwhile, the intellect performs its function; it leads man to the gates of a greater self-consciousness and places him with unbandaged eyes on that wide threshold where a more luminous Angel has to take him by the hand. It takes first the lower powers of his existence, each absorbed in its own urge, each striving with a blind self-sufficiency towards the fulfilment of its own instincts and primary impulses; it teaches them to understand themselves and to look through the reflecting eyes of the intelligence on the laws of their own action. It enables them to discern intelligently the high in themselves from the low, the pure from the impure and out of a crude confusion to arrive at more and more luminous formulas of their possibilities. It gives them self-knowledge and is a guide, teacher, purifier, liberator. For it enables them also to look beyond themselves and at each other and to draw upon each other for fresh motives and a richer working. It streng thens and purifies the hedonistic and the aesthetic activities and softens their quarrel with the ethical mind and instinct; it gives them solidity and seriousness, brings them to the support of the practical and dynamic powers and allies them more closely to the strong actualities of life. It sweetens the ethical will by infusing into it psychic, hedonistic and aesthetic elements and ennobles by all these separately or together the practical, dynamic and utilitarian temperament of the human being. At the same time it plays the part of a judge and legislator, seeks to fix rules, provide systems and regularised combinations which shall enable the powers of the human soul to walk by a settled path and act according to a sure law, an ascertained measure and in a balanced rhythm. Here it finds after a time that its legislative action becomes a force for limitation and turns into a bondage and that the regularised system which it has imposed in the interests of order and conservation becomes a cause of petrifaction and the sealing up of the fountains of life. It has to bring in its own saving faculty of doubt. Under the impulse of the intelligence warned by the obscure revolt of the oppressed springs of life, ethics, aesthetics, the social, political, economic rule begin to question themselves and, if this at first brings in again some confusion, disorder and uncertainty, yet it awakens new movements of imagination, insight, self-knowledge and self-realisation by which old systems and formulas are transformed or disappear, new experiments are made and in the end larger potentialities and combinations are brought into play. By this double action of the intelligence, affirming and imposing what it has seen and again in due season questioning what has been accomplished in order to make a new affirmation, fixing a rule and order and liberating from rule and order, the progress of the race is assured, however uncertain may seem its steps and stages.
  But the action of the intelligence is not only turned downward and outward upon our subjective and external life to understand it and determine the law and order of its present movement and its future potentialities. It has also an upward and inward eye and a more luminous functioning by which it accepts divinations from the hidden eternities. It is opened in this power of vision to a Truth above it from which it derives, however imperfectly and as from behind a veil, an indirect knowledge of the universal principles of our existence and its possibilities; it receives and turns what it can seize of them into intellectual forms and these provide us with large governing ideas by which our efforts can be shaped and around which they can be concentrated or massed; it defines the ideals which we seek to accomplish. It provides us with the great ideas that are forces (ides forces), ideas which in their own strength impose themselves upon our life and compel it into their moulds. Only the forms we give these ideas are intellectual; they themselves descend from a plane of truth of being where knowledge and force are one, the idea and the power of self-fulfilment in the idea are inseparable. Unfortunately, when translated into the forms of our intelligence which acts only by a separating and combining analysis and synthesis and into the effort of our life which advances by a sort of experimental and empirical seeking, these powers become disparate and conflicting ideals which we have all the difficulty in the world to bring into any kind of satisfactory harmony. Such are the primary principles of liberty and order, good, beauty and truth, the ideal of power and the ideal of love, individualism and collectivism, self-denial and self-fulfilment and a hundred others. In each sphere of human life, in each part of our being and our action the intellect presents us with the opposition of a number of such master ideas and such conflicting principles. It finds each to be a truth to which something essential in our being responds,in our higher nature a law, in our lower nature an instinct. It seeks to fulfil each in turn, builds a system of action round it and goes from one to the other and back again to what it has left. Or it tries to combine them but is contented with none of the combinations it has made because none brings about their perfect reconciliation or their satisfied oneness. That indeed belongs to a larger and higher consciousness, not yet attained by mankind, where these opposites are ever harmonised and even unified because in their origin they are eternally one. But still every enlarged attempt of the intelligence thus dealing with our inner and outer life increases the width and wealth of our nature, opens it to larger possibilities of self-knowledge and self-realisation and brings us nearer to our awakening into that greater consciousness.

1.14 - The Principle of Divine Works, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   the thought of the Gita reaches beyond to a tertiary condition of our developing self-consciousness towards which the secondary is only a partial stage of advance.
  The Indian social tendency has been to subordinate the individual to the claims of society, but Indian religious thought and spiritual seeking have been always loftily individualistic in their aims. An Indian system of thought like the Gita's cannot possibly fail to put first the development of the individual, the highest need of the individual, his claim to discover and exercise his largest spiritual freedom, greatness, splendour, royalty, - his aim to develop into the illumined seer and king in the spiritual sense of seerdom and kingship, which was the first great charter of the ideal humanity promulgated by the ancient Vedic sages.

1.15 - The Supreme Truth-Consciousness, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  5:What we have to realise and can to a certain extent conceive is the one view and all-comprehending regard by which the Supermind embraces and unifies the successions of Time and the divisions of Space. And first, if there were not this factor of the successions of Time, there would be no change or progression; a perfect harmony would be perpetually manifest, coeval with other harmonies in a sort of eternal moment, not successive to them in the movement from past to future. We have instead the constant succession of a developing harmony in which one strain rises out of another that preceded it and conceals in itself that which it has replaced. Or, if the self-manifestation were to exist without the factor of divisible Space, there would be no mutable relation of forms or intershock of forces; all would exist and not be worked out, - a spaceless self-consciousness purely subjective would contain all things in an infinite subjective grasp as in the mind of a cosmic poet or dreamer, but would not distribute itself through all in an indefinite objective self-extension. Or again, if Time alone were real, its successions would be a pure development in which one strain would rise out of another in a subjective free spontaneity as in a series of musical sounds or a succession of poetical images. We have instead a harmony worked out by Time in terms of forms and forces that stand related to one another in an all-containing spatial extension; an incessant succession of powers and figures of things and happenings is our vision of existence.
  6:Different potentialities are embodied, placed, related in this field of Time and Space, each with its powers and possibilities fronting other powers and possibilities, and as a result the successions of Time become in their appearance to the mind a working out of things by shock and struggle and not a spontaneous succession. In reality, there is a spontaneous working out of things from within and the external shock and struggle are only the superficial aspect of this elaboration. For the inner and inherent law of the one and whole, which is necessarily a harmony, governs the outer and processive laws of the parts or forms which appear to be in collision; and to the supramental vision this greater and profounder truth of harmony is always present. That which is an apparent discord to the mind because it considers each thing separately in itself, is an element of the general ever-present and ever-developing harmony to the Supermind because it views all things in a multiple unity. Besides, the mind sees only a given time and space and views many possibilities pell-mell as all more or less realisable in that time and space; the divine Supermind sees the whole extension of Time and Space and can embrace all the mind's possibilities and very many more not visible to the mind, but without any error, groping or confusion; for it perceives each potentiality in its proper force, essential necessity, right relation to the others and the time, place and circumstance both of its gradual and its ultimate realisation. To see things steadily and see them whole is not possible to the mind; but it is the very nature of the transcendent Supermind.

1.19 - Equality, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  - it must have above it the sattwic vision of knowledge, at its root the aim at self-realisation and in its steps the ascent to the divine Nature. A Stoic discipline which merely crushed down the common affections of our human nature, - although less dangerous than a tamasic weariness of life, unfruitful pessimism and sterile inertia, because it would at least increase the power and self-mastery of the soul, - would still be no unmixed good, since it might lead to insensibility and an inhuman isolation without giving the true spiritual release. The Stoic equality is justified as an element in the discipline of the Gita because it can be associated with and can help to the realisation of the free immutable Self in the mobile human being, param dr.s.t.va, and to status in that new self-consciousness, es.a brahm sthitih..
  "Awakening by the understanding to the Highest which is beyond even the discerning mind, put force on the self by the self to make it firm and still, and slay this enemy who is so hard to assail, Desire." Both the tamasic recoil of escape and the rajasic movement of struggle and victory are only justified when they look beyond themselves through the sattwic principle to the self-knowledge which legitimises both the recoil and the struggle.

1.22 - The Problem of Life, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  3:The whole crux and difficulty of human life lies here. Man is this mental being, this mental consciousness working as mental force, aware in a way of the universal force and life of which he is part but, because he has not knowledge of its universality or even of the totality of his own being, unable to deal either with life in general or with his own life in a really effective and victorious movement of mastery. He seeks to know Matter in order to be master of the material environment, to know Life in order to be master of the vital existence, to know Mind in order to be master of the great obscure movement of mentality in which he is not only a jet of light of self-consciousness like the animal, but also more and more a flame of growing knowledge. Thus he seeks to know himself in order to be master of himself, to know the world in order to be master of the world. This is the urge of Existence in him, the necessity of the Consciousness he is, the impulsion of the Force that is his life, the secret will of Sachchidananda appearing as the individual in a world in which He expresses and yet seems to deny Himself. To find the conditions under which this inner impulsion is satisfied is the problem man must strive always to resolve and to that he is compelled by the very nature of his own existence and by the Deity seated within him; and until the problem is solved, the impulse satisfied, the human race cannot rest from its labour. Either man must fulfil himself by satisfying the Divine within him or he must produce out of himself a new and greater being who will be more capable of satisfying it. He must either himself become a divine humanity or give place to Superman.
  4:This results from the very logic of things because, the mental consciousness of man not being the completely illumined consciousness entirely emerged out of the obscuration of Matter but only a progressive term in the great emergence, the line of evolutionary creation in which he has appeared cannot stop where he now is, but must go either beyond its present term in him or else beyond him if he himself has not the force to go forward. Mental idea trying to become fact of life must pass on till it becomes the whole Truth of existence delivering itself out of its successive wrappings, revealed and progressively fulfilled in light of consciousness and joyously fulfilled in power; for in and through these two terms of power and light Existence manifests itself, because existence is in its nature Consciousness and Force: but the third term in which these, its two constituents, meet, become one and are ultimately fulfilled, is satisfied Delight of self-existence. For an evolving life like ours this inevitable culmination must necessarily mean the finding of the self that was contained in the seed of its own birth and, with that selffinding, the complete working out of the potentialities deposited in the movement of Conscious-Force from which this life took its rise. The potentiality thus contained in our human existence is Sachchidananda realising Himself in a certain harmony and unification of the individual life and the universal so that mankind shall express in a common consciousness, common movement of power, common delight the transcendent Something which has cast itself into this form of things.

1.24 - Matter, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  10:Therefore we arrive at this truth of Matter that there is a conceptive self-extension of being which works itself out in the universe as substance or object of consciousness and which cosmic Mind and Life in their creative action represent through atomic division and aggregation as the thing we call Matter. But this Matter, like Mind and Life, is still Being or Brahman in its self-creative action. It is a form of the force of conscious Being, a form given by Mind and realised by Life. It holds within it as its own reality consciousness concealed from itself, involved and absorbed in the result of its own self-formation and therefore self-oblivious. And, however brute and void of sense it seems to us, it is yet, to the secret experience of the consciousness hidden within it, delight of being offering itself to this secret consciousness as object of sensation in order to tempt that hidden godhead out of its secrecy. Being manifest as substance, force of Being cast into form, into a figured selfrepresentation of the secret self-consciousness, delight offering itself to its own consciousness as an object, - what is this but Sachchidananda? Matter is Sachchidananda represented to His own mental experience as a formal basis of objective knowledge, action and delight of existence.

1.27 - The Sevenfold Chord of Being, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  1:WE HAVE now, by our scrutiny of the seven great terms of existence which the ancient seers fixed on as the foundation and sevenfold mode of all cosmic existence, discerned the gradations of evolution and involution and arrived at the basis of knowledge towards which we were striving. We have laid down that the origin, the continent, the initial and the ultimate reality of all that is in the cosmos is the triune principle of transcendent and infinite Existence, Consciousness and Bliss which is the nature of divine being. Consciousness has two aspects, illuminating and effective, state and power of self-awareness and state and power of self-force, by which Being possesses itself whether in its static condition or in its dynamic movement; for in its creative action it knows by omnipotent self-consciousness all that is latent within it and produces and governs the universe of its potentialities by an omniscient self-energy. This creative action of the Allexistent has its nodus in the fourth, the intermediate principle of Supermind or Real-Idea, in which a divine Knowledge one with self-existence and self-awareness and a substantial Will which is in perfect unison with that knowledge, because it is itself in its substance and nature that self-conscious self-existence dynamic in illumined action, develop infallibly the movement and form and law of things in right accordance with their self-existent Truth and in harmony with the significances of its manifestation.
  2:The creation depends on and moves between the biune principle of unity and multiplicity; it is a manifoldness of idea and force and form which is the expression of an original unity, and it is an eternal oneness which is the foundation and reality of the multiple worlds and makes their play possible. Supermind therefore proceeds by a double faculty of comprehensive and apprehensive knowledge; proceeding from the essential oneness to the resultant multiplicity, it comprehends all things in itself as itself the One in its manifold aspects and it apprehends separately all things in itself as objects of its will and knowledge. While to its original self-awareness all things are one being, one consciousness, one will, one self-delight and the whole movement of things a movement one and indivisible, it proceeds in its action from the unity to the multiplicity and from multiplicity to unity, creating an ordered relation between them and an appearance but not a binding reality of division, a subtle unseparating division, or rather a demarcation and determination within the indivisible. The Supermind is the divine Gnosis which creates, governs and upholds the worlds: it is the secret Wisdom which upholds both our Knowledge and our Ignorance.

1.3.2.01 - I. The Entire Purpose of Yoga, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Personal Brahman. There is no difference between them except to the play of our consciousness; for every impersonal state depends upon a manifest or secret Personality and can reveal the Personality which it holds and veils and every Personality attaches to itself and can plunge itself into an impersonal existence. This they can do because Personality & Impersonality are merely different states of self-consciousness in one Absolute
  Being.

1.439, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
  It is your self-consciousness which now speaks of unconsciousness.
  When a person wants to see if there is an article in a dark room he takes a lamp to look for it. The light is useful for detecting the presence and the absence of the thing. Consciousness is necessary for discovering if a thing is conscious or not. If a man remains in a dark room one need not take a lamp to find him. If called, he answers. He does not require a lamp to announce his presence.
  --
  Now you say you were unconscious in sleep and self-conscious in the wakeful state. Which is the Reality? The Reality must be continuous and eternal. Neither the unconsciousness nor the self-consciousness of the present is the Reality. But you admit your existence all through. The pure Being is the reality. The others are mere associations. The pure
  Being cannot be otherwise than consciousness. Otherwise you cannot say that you exist. Therefore consciousness is the reality. When that consciousness is associated with upadhis you speak of self-consciousness, unconsciousness, sub-consciousness, super-consciousness, humanconsciousness, dog-consciousness, tree-consciousness and so on. The unaltering common factor in all of them is consciousness.
  Therefore the stone is as much unconscious as you are in sleep. Is that totally devoid of consciousness?

1.4 - Readings in the Taittiriya Upanishad, #Kena and Other Upanishads, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  To live in our present state of self-consciousness is to live and to
  act in ignorance. We are ignorant of ourselves, because we know

1.550 - 1.600 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
  It is your self-consciousness which now speaks of unconsciousness.
  When a person wants to see if there is an article in a dark room he takes a lamp to look for it. The light is useful for detecting the presence and the absence of the thing. Consciousness is necessary for discovering if a thing is conscious or not. If a man remains in a dark room one need not take a lamp to find him. If called, he answers. He does not require a lamp to announce his presence.
  --
  Now you say you were unconscious in sleep and self-conscious in the wakeful state. Which is the Reality? The Reality must be continuous and eternal. Neither the unconsciousness nor the self-consciousness of the present is the Reality. But you admit your existence all through. The pure Being is the reality. The others are mere associations. The pure
  Being cannot be otherwise than consciousness. Otherwise you cannot say that you exist. Therefore consciousness is the reality. When that consciousness is associated with upadhis you speak of self-consciousness, unconsciousness, sub-consciousness, super-consciousness, humanconsciousness, dog-consciousness, tree-consciousness and so on. The unaltering common factor in all of them is consciousness.
  Therefore the stone is as much unconscious as you are in sleep. Is that totally devoid of consciousness?

1956-12-19 - Preconceived mental ideas - Process of creation - Destructive power of bad thoughts - To be perfectly sincere, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
    Be conscious first of thyself within, then think and act. All living thought is a world in preparation; all real act is a thought manifested. The material world exists, because an Idea began to play in divine self-consciousness.
    Thought is not essential to existence nor its cause, but it is an instrument for being; I become what I see in myself. All that thought suggests to me, I can do; all that thought reveals in me, I can become. This should be mans unshakable faith in himself, because God dwells in him.

1.jt - Love beyond all telling (from Self-Annihilation and Charity Lead the Soul...), #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
   English version by Serge and Elizabeth Hughes Original Language Italian Love beyond all telling, Goodness beyond imagining, Light of infinite intensity Glows in my heart. I once thought that reason Had led me to You, And that through feeling I sensed Your presence, Caught a glimpse of You in similitudes, Knew You in Your perfection. I know now that I was wrong, That that truth was flawed. Light beyond metaphor, Why did You deign to come into this darkness? Your light does not illumine those who think they see You And believe they sound Your depths. Night, I know now, is day, Virtue no more to be found. He who witnesses Your splendor Can never describe it. On achieving their desired end Human powers cease to function, And the soul sees that what it thought was right Was wrong. A new exchange occurs At that point where all light disappears; A new and unsought state is needed: The soul has what it did not love, And is stripped of all it possessed, no matter how dear. In God the spiritual faculties Come to their desired end, Lose all sense of self and self-consciousness, And are swept into infinity. The soul, made new again, Marveling to find itself In that immensity, drowns. How this comes about it does not know. [2229.jpg] -- from Jacopone da Todi: Lauds (Classics of Western Spirituality), Translated by Serge and Elizabeth Hughes <
1.rb - Sordello - Book the Second, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
  "So, range, free soul!who, by self-consciousness,
  "The last drop of all beauty dost express

2.01 - On Books, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   self-consciousness. Man is conscious of himself as a distinct entity apart from all the rest of the universe. It is as good as certain that no animal can realise itself in that way.
   Man can say: "I know it is true" and also "I know that I know it is true." Language is the objective side of the phenomenon of which self-consciousness is the subjective.
   Cosmic consciousness, etc.
  --
   The division of consciousness into three forms or types is all right in a rough way. But his statement that man has self-consciousness while the animal has not is not quite true. And his argument is: because animals have no articulate speech and because they don't know that they exist, therefore they are not self-conscious. He admits that animals have reasoning power. But it is not true that they have no language. They have some sort of intoned sounds which are like the language of the aborigines and also they have a power of wonderful telepathic communication of impulse.... So, having no articulate language does not imply absence of self-consciousness. Of course, the animals have no intellectual ideas to convey. But they have self-consciousness.
   The cosmic consciousness, as he describes it, seems to be the coming down of Light with the intuitive mind. But that is not the whole level of the Higher Consciousness above the mind. There are other truths which are as real as those of which Dr. Bucke speaks.

2.02 - Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Each self-determination of the self-being must have its own awareness of its self-truth and its self-nature; or, if we prefer so to put it, the Being in that determination must be so selfaware. Spiritual individuality means that each individual self or spirit is a centre of self-vision and all-vision; the circumference - the boundless circumference, as we may say, - of this vision may be the same for all, but the centre may be different, - not located as in a spatial point in a spatial circle, but a psychological centre related with others through a coexistence of the diversely conscious Many in the universal being. Each being in a world will see the same world, but see it from its own self-being according to its own way of self-nature: for each will manifest its own truth of the Infinite, its own way of self-determination and of meeting the cosmic determinations; its vision by the law of unity in variety will no doubt be fundamentally the same as that of others, but it will still develop its own differentiation, - as we see all human beings conscious in the one human way of the same cosmic things, yet always with an individual difference. This self-limitation would be, not fundamental, but an individual specialisation of a common universality or totality; the spiritual individual would act from his own centre of the one Truth and according to his self-nature, but on a common basis and not with any blindness to other-self and other-nature. It would be consciousness limiting its action with full knowledge, not a movement of ignorance. But apart from this individualising self-limitation, there must also be in the consciousness of the Infinite a power of cosmic limitation; it must be able to limit its action so as to base a given world or universe and to keep it in its own order, harmony, self-building: for the creation of a universe necessitates a special determination of the Infinite Consciousness to preside over that world and a holding back of all that is not needed for that movement. In the same way the putting forth of an independent action of some power like Mind, Life or Matter must have as its support a similar principle of self-limitation. It cannot be said that such a movement must be impossible for the Infinite, because it is illimitable; on the contrary, this must be one of its many powers; for its powers too are illimitable: but this also, like other self-determinations, other finite buildings, would not be a separation or a real division, for all the Infinite Consciousness would be around and behind it and supporting it and the special movement itself would be intrinsically aware not only of itself, but, in essence, of all that was behind it. This would be so, inevitably, in the integral consciousness of the Infinite: but we can suppose also that an intrinsic though not an active awareness of this kind, demarcating itself, yet indivisible, might be there too in the total self-consciousness of the movement of the Finite. This much cosmic or individual conscious selflimitation would evidently be possible to the Infinite and can be accepted by a larger reason as one of its spiritual possibilities; but so far, on this basis, any division or ignorant separation or binding and blinding limitation such as is apparent in our own consciousness would be unaccountable.
  But a third power or possibility of the Infinite Consciousness can be admitted, its power of self-absorption, of plunging into itself, into a state in which self-awareness exists but not as knowledge and not as all-knowledge; the all would then be involved in pure self-awareness, and knowledge and the inner consciousness itself would be lost in pure being. This is, luminously, the state which we call the Superconscience in an absolute sense, - although most of what we call superconscient is in reality not that but only a higher conscient, something that is conscious to itself and only superconscious to our own limited level of awareness. This self-absorption, this trance of infinity is again, no longer luminously but darkly, the state which we call the Inconscient; for the being of the Infinite is there though by its appearance of inconscience it seems to us rather to be an infinite non-being: a self-oblivious intrinsic consciousness and force are there in that apparent non-being, for by the energy of the Inconscient an ordered world is created; it is created in a trance of self-absorption, the force acting automatically and with an apparent blindness as in a trance, but still with the inevitability and power of truth of the Infinite. If we take a step further and admit that a special or a restricted and partial action of selfabsorption is possible to the Infinite, an action not always of its infinity concentrated limitlessly in itself, but confined to a special status or to an individual or cosmic self-determination, we have then the explanation of the concentrated condition or status by which it becomes aware separately of one aspect of its being.

2.03 - The Eternal and the Individual, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  But we see farther that it is not solely and ultimately the cosmic being into which our individual being enters but something in which both are unified. As our individualisation in the world is a becoming of that Self, so is the world too a becoming of that Self. The world-being includes always the individual being; therefore these two becomings, the cosmic and the individual, are always related to each other and in their practical relation mutually dependent. But we find that the individual being also comes in the end to include the world in its consciousness, and since this is not by an abolition of the spiritual individual, but by his coming to his full, large and perfect self-consciousness, we must suppose that the individual always included the cosmos, and it is only the surface consciousness which by ignorance failed to possess that inclusion because of its self-limitation in ego. But when we speak of the mutual inclusion of the cosmic and the individual, the world in me, I in the world, all in me, I in all,
  - for that is the liberated self-experience, - we are evidently travelling beyond the language of the normal reason. That is because the words we have to use were minted by mind and given their values by an intellect bound to the conceptions of physical Space and circumstance and using for the language of a higher psychological experience figures drawn from the physical life and the experience of the senses. But the plane of consciousness to which the liberated human being arises is not dependent upon the physical world, and the cosmos which we thus include and are included in is not the physical cosmos, but the harmonically manifest being of God in certain great rhythms of His consciousforce and self-delight. Therefore this mutual inclusion is spiritual and psychological; it is a translation of the two forms of the Many, all and individual, into a unifying spiritual experience, - a translation of the eternal unity of the One and the Many; for the One is the eternal unity of the Many differentiating and undifferentiating itself in the cosmos. This means that cosmos and individual are manifestations of a transcendent Self who is indivisible being although he seems to be divided or distributed; but he is not really divided or distributed but indivisibly present everywhere. Therefore all is in each and each is in all and all is in God and God in all; and when the liberated soul comes into union with this Transcendent, it has this self-experience of itself and cosmos which is translated psychologically into a mutual inclusion and a persistent existence of both in a divine union which is at once a oneness and a fusion and an embrace.
  --
  This truth which we can see, though with difficulty and under considerable restrictions, even in the material world where the subtler and higher powers of being have to be excluded from our intellectual operations, becomes clearer and more powerful when we ascend in the scale. We see the truth of our classifications and distinctions, but also their limits. All things, even while different, are yet one. For practical purposes plant, animal, man are different existences; yet when we look deeper we see that the plant is only an animal with an insufficient evolution of self-consciousness and dynamic force; the animal is man in the making; man himself is that animal and yet the something more of self-consciousness and dynamic power of consciousness that make him man; and yet again he is the something more which is contained and repressed in his being as the potentiality of the divine, - he is a god in the making. In each of these, plant, animal, man, god, the Eternal is there containing and repressing himself as it were in order to make a certain statement of his being. Each is the whole Eternal concealed. Man himself, who takes up all that went before him and transmutes it into the term of manhood, is the individual human being and yet he is all mankind, the universal man acting in the individual as a human personality. He is all and yet he is himself and unique.
  He is what he is, but he is also the past of all that he was and the potentiality of all that he is not. We cannot understand him if we look only at his present individuality, but we cannot understand him either if we look only at his commonalty, his general term of manhood, or go back by exclusion from both to an essentiality of his being in which his distinguishing manhood and his particularising individuality seem to disappear. Each thing is the

2.07 - The Knowledge and the Ignorance, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  For, as a matter of fact, while the very keyword of the ideal creation is a plenary self-consciousness and self-possession in the infinite Soul and a perfect oneness, the keyword of the creation of which we have present experience is the very opposite; it is an original inconscience developing in life into a limited and divided self-consciousness, an original inert subjection to the drive of a blind self-existent Force developing in life into a struggle of the self-conscious being to possess himself and all things and
  6 Rig Veda, VII. 60. 5.

2.07 - The Upanishad in Aphorism, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
  The motion of Nature is not real or material motion, but vibration of the soul's self-consciousness.
  Nature is Chit-Shakti, the Lord's expressive power of selfawareness, by which whatever He sees in Himself, becomes in form of consciousness.

2.08 - Memory, Self-Consciousness and the Ignorance, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  object:2.08 - Memory, self-consciousness and the Ignorance
  class:chapter
  --
  Memory, self-consciousness and the Ignorance
  Some speak of the self-nature of things, others say that it is
  --
  Memory, self-consciousness and the Ignorance
  521
  --
  Memory, self-consciousness and the Ignorance
  523
  --
  Memory, self-consciousness and the Ignorance
  525
  --
   moment and the immediate space. The one thing which is not a device is its direct self-consciousness in the present moment.
  Therefore through that it can most easily lay hold on the fact of eternal being, on the reality; all the rest it is tempted, when it considers things narrowly, to look on not merely as phenomenon, but as, possibly, error, ignorance, illusion, because they no longer appear to it directly real. So the Illusionist considers them; the only thing he holds to be truly real is that eternal self which lies behind the mind's direct present self-consciousness. Or else, like the Buddhist, one comes to regard even that eternal self as an illusion, a representation, a subjective image, a mere imagination or false sensation and false idea of being. Mind becomes to its own view a fantastic magician, its works and itself at once strangely existent and non-existent, a persistent reality and yet a fleeting error which it accounts for or does not account for, but in any case is determined to slay and get done with both itself and its works so that it may rest, may cease in the timeless repose of the Eternal from the vain representation of appearances.
  But, in truth, our sharp distinctions made between the without and the within, the present and the past self-consciousness are tricks of the limited unstable action of mind. Behind the mind and using it as its own surface activity there is a stable consciousness in which there is no binding conceptual division between itself in the present and itself in the past and future; and yet it knows itself in Time, in the present, past and future, but at once, with an undivided view which embraces all the mobile experiences of the Time-self and holds them on the foundation of the immobile timeless self. This consciousness we can become aware of when we draw back from the mind and its activities or when these fall silent. But we see first its immobile status, and if we regard only the immobility of the self, we may say of it that it is not only timeless, but actionless, without movement of idea, thought, imagination, memory, will, self-sufficient, selfabsorbed and therefore void of all action of the universe. That then becomes alone real to us and the rest a vain symbolising in non-existent forms - or forms corresponding to nothing truly existent - and therefore a dream. But this self-absorption is only
  Memory, self-consciousness and the Ignorance
  527
  --
  So far we arrive by considering mind and memory mainly in regard to the primary phenomenon of mental self-consciousness in Time. But if we consider them with regard to self-experience as well as self-consciousness and other-experience as well as self-experience, we shall find that we arrive at the same result with richer contents and a still clearer light on the nature of the
  Ignorance. At present, let us thus express what we have seen,
  - an eternal conscious being who supports the mobile action of mind on a stable immobile self-consciousness free from the action of Time and who, while with a knowledge superior to mind he embraces all the movement of Time, dwells by the action of mind in that movement. As the surface mental entity moving from moment to moment, not observing his essential self but only his relation to his experiences of the Time-movement, in that movement keeping the future from himself in what appears to be a blank of Ignorance and non-existence but is an unrealised fullness, grasping knowledge and experience of being in the present, putting it away in the past which again appears to be a blank of Ignorance and non-existence partly lighted, partly saved and stored up by memory, he puts on the aspect of a thing fleeting and uncertain seizing without stability upon things fleeting and uncertain. But in reality, we shall find, he is always the same Eternal who is for ever stable and self-possessed in His supramental knowledge and what he seizes on is also for ever stable and eternal; for it is himself that he is mentally experiencing in the succession of Time.
  Time is the great bank of conscious existence turned into

2.09 - Memory, Ego and Self-Experience, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  HE DIRECT self-consciousness of the mental being, that by which it becomes aware of its own nameless and formless existence behind the flow of a differentiated self-experience, of its eternal soul-substance behind the mental formations of that substance, of its self behind the ego, goes behind mentality to the timelessness of an eternal present; it is that in it which is ever the same and unaffected by the mental distinction of past, present and future. It is also unaffected by the distinctions of space or of circumstance; for if the mental being ordinarily says of itself, "I am in the body, I am here, I was there, I shall be elsewhere", yet when it learns to fix itself in this direct self-consciousness, it very soon perceives that this is the language of its changing self-experience which only expresses the relations of its surface consciousness to the environment and to externalities. Distinguishing these, detaching itself from
  1 IV. 5.
  --
  Thus the mind has over and above its direct self-consciousness a more or less indirect mutable self-experience which it divides into two parts, its subjective experience of the ever-modified mental states of its personality and its objective experience of the ever-changing environment which seems partly or wholly to cause and is yet at the same time itself affected by the workings of that personality. But all this experience is at bottom subjective; for even the objective and external is only known to mind in the form of subjective impressions.
  Here the part played by Memory increases greatly in importance; for while all that it can do for the mind with regard to its direct self-consciousness is to remind it that it existed and was the same in the past as in the present, it becomes in our differentiated or surface self-experience an important power linking together past and present experiences, past and present personality, preventing chaos and dissociation and assuring the continuity of the stream in the surface mind. Still even here we must not exaggerate the function of memory or ascribe to it that part of the operations of consciousness which really belongs to the activity of other power-aspects of the mental being. It is not the memory alone which constitutes the ego-sense; memory is only a mediator between the sense-mind and the co-ordinating intelligence: it offers to the intelligence the past data of experience which the mind holds somewhere within but cannot carry with it in its running from moment to moment on the surface.
  A little analysis will make this apparent. We have in all functionings of the mentality four elements, the object of mental consciousness, the act of mental consciousness, the occasion and the subject. In the self-experience of the self-observing inner being, the object is always some state or movement or wave of the conscious being, anger, grief or other emotion, hunger or other vital craving, impulse or inner life reaction or some form of sensation, perception or thought activity. The act is some kind of mental observation and conceptual valuation of this movement or wave or else a mental sensation of it in which
  --
  Energy in the material world is increased or diminished by the constantly changing combinations of the elements, - although it seems to be changed to the experiencing consciousness so long as it lives only in the knowledge of the phenomenon and does not get back to the knowledge of the original being, substance or Force. When it does get back to that deeper knowledge, it does not condemn the observed phenomenon as unreal, but it perceives an immutable being, energy or real substance not phenomenal, not subject in itself to the senses; it sees at the same time a becoming or real phenomenon of that being, energy or substance. This becoming we call phenomenon because, actually, as things are with us now, it manifests itself to the consciousness under the conditions of sense-perception and sense-relation and not directly to the consciousness itself in its pure and unconditioned embracing and totally comprehending knowledge. So with the Self, - it is, immutably, to our direct self-consciousness; it manifests itself mutably in various becomings to the mindsense and the mental experience - therefore, as things are with us now, not directly to the pure unconditioned knowledge of the consciousness, but to it under the conditions of our mentality.
  Memory, Ego and Self-Experience
  --
   the energy and substance of the material world. We may say, if we like, that there is a subconscious memory in all energy of Nature which repeats invariably the same relation of energy and result; but then we enlarge illimitably the connotation of the word. In reality, we can only state a law of repetition in the action of the waves of conscious-force by which it regularises these movements of its own substance. Memory, properly speaking, is merely the device by which the witnessing Mind helps itself to link together these movements and their occurrence and recurrences in the successions of Time for Time-experience, for increasing use by a more and more co-ordinating will and for a constantly developing valuation by a more and more coordinating reason. It is a great, an indispensable but not the only factor in the process by which the Inconscience from which we start develops full self-consciousness, and by which the Ignorance of the mental being develops conscious knowledge of itself in its becomings. This development continues until the coordinating mind of knowledge and mind of will are fully able to possess and use all the material of self-experience. Such at least is the process of evolution as we see it governing the development of Mind out of the self-absorbed and apparently mindless energy in the material world.
  The ego-sense is another device of mental Ignorance by which the mental being becomes aware of himself, - not only of the objects, occasions and acts of his activity, but of that which experiences them. At first it might seem as if the ego-sense were actually constituted by memory, as if it were memory that told us, "It is the same I who was angry some time ago and am again or still angry now." But, in reality, all that the memory can tell us by its own power is that it is the same limited field of conscious activity in which the same phenomenon has occurred. What happens is that there is a repetition of the mental phenomenon, of that wave of becoming in the mind-substance of which the mind-sense is immediately aware; memory comes in to link these repetitions together and enables the mind-sense to realise that it is the same mind-substance which is taking the same dynamic form and the same mind-sense which is experiencing it. The
  --
   ego-sense is not a result of memory or built by memory, but already and always there as a point of reference or as something in which the mind-sense concentrates itself so as to have a coordinant centre instead of sprawling incoherently all over the field of experience; ego-memory reinforces this concentration and helps to maintain it, but does not constitute it. Possibly, in the lower animal the sense of ego, the sense of individuality would not, if analysed, go much farther than a sensational imprecise or less precise realisation of continuity and identity and separateness from others in the moments of Time. But in man there is in addition a co-ordinating mind of knowledge which, basing itself on the united action of the mind-sense and the memory, arrives at the distinct idea - while it retains also the first constant intuitive perception - of an ego which senses, feels, remembers, thinks, and which is the same whether it remembers or does not remember. This conscious mind-substance, it says, is always that of one and the same conscious person who feels, ceases to feel, remembers, forgets, is superficially conscious, sinks back from superficial consciousness into sleep; he is the same before the organisation of memory and after it, in the infant and in the dotard, in sleep and in waking, in apparent consciousness and apparent unconsciousness; he and no other did the acts which he forgets as well as the acts which he remembers; he is persistently the same behind all changes of his becoming or his personality. This action of knowledge in man, this coordinating intelligence, this formulation of self-consciousness and self-experience is higher than the memory-ego and sense-ego of the animal and therefore, we may suppose, nearer to real selfknowledge. We may even come to realise, if we study the veiled as well as the uncovered action of Nature, that all ego-sense, all ego-memory has at its back, is in fact a pragmatic contrivance of a secret co-ordinating power or mind of knowledge, present in the universal conscious-force, of which the reason in man is the overt form at which our evolution arrives, - a form still limited and imperfect in its modes of action and constituting principle.
  There is a subconscious knowledge even in the Inconscient, a greater intrinsic Reason in things which impose co-ordination,
  --
  All that has been established is that the mental being can on one side absorb himself in direct self-consciousness to the apparent
  Memory, Ego and Self-Experience
  --
   exclusion of all becoming and can on the other side absorb himself in the becoming to the apparent exclusion of all stable self-consciousness. Both sides of the mind, separating as antagonists, condemn what they reject as unreal or else as only a play of the conscious mind; to one or the other, either the Divine, the Self, or the world is only relatively real so long as the mind persists in creating them, the world an effective dream of Self, or
  God and Self a mental construction or an effective hallucination.

2.0 - THE ANTICHRIST, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
  adamantine self-consciousness it laid the substructure, alone, to
  a work which was to last millenniums, the whole _significance_ of

2.1.02 - Nature The World-Manifestation, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Chitshakti not mind has created the world. Chitshakti is the thing which the Scientists call in its various aspects Force & Energy, but it is no material Force or Energy, it is the divine power of self-conscious Being forming itself not materially, not in substance of matter but in the substance of that self-consciousness into these images of form and force which make up the world.
  What we call world, is a harmony of things seen not by the individual mind or even by universal mind, but rather seen through universal mind, as through a reflecting medium, by the Eye of divine Being. The eye that sees is immaterial, the things seen are
  --
  Well, the individual soul can escape from consciousness of the universe, but what of the universal consciousness? For so long as the universe goes on existing - and who shall say that it is not for all eternity? - this escape may only prove that the individual soul goes into a state of unconsciousness or absorbed self-consciousness, like a man going to sleep or falling into a trance, while the world goes on around him just as before essentially unaffected and not at all annulled by his unconsciousness of it. But in the first place this highest power of the individual consciousness cannot be peculiar to it, for it must be a power of the general and universal; the individual reflects the universal, for it is only the law of the universal that can be repeated with individual modifications in the law of the individual. Secondly, the universal soul is the same in all; for that is the experience of the highest knowledge and consciousness, that there [is] one self in all, featureless, immutable, unmodifiable, the same amidst all the changes of phenomena. As this self can draw back that which supports the individual into it, so it is and must be capable of drawing back that which supports the universal. In one case the stream of phenomena centred around its individual reflection ceases, in the other the stream of phenomena centred around its universal reflection. A theory only? But it is justified by reason acting on our total experience which sees the lower or phenomenal and the higher or eternal and sees how the phenomenal disappears, vanishes away from the face of the eternal.
  We have then as a fact a supreme state of existence which is self-existent, the original I am, which is featureless bliss and consciousness of being, immutable, eternal and this seems to be common to all beings, secret in all, the real self of all. But what then of the world? It is a mass of constant modifications of

2.10 - Knowledge by Identity and Separative Knowledge, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  But there is another status of spiritual awareness which seems to us to be a development from this state and power of pure self-consciousness, perhaps even a first departure, but is in fact normal and intimate to it; for the awareness by identity is always the very stuff of all the Spirit's self-knowledge, but it admits within itself, without changing or modifying its own eternal nature, a subordinate and simultaneous awareness by inclusion and by indwelling. The Being, the Self-existent sees all existences in its one existence; it contains them all and knows them as being of its being, consciousness of its consciousness, power of its power, bliss of its bliss; it is at the same time, necessarily, the Self in them and knows all in them by its pervadingly indwelling selfness: but still all this awareness exists intrinsically, self-evidently, automatically, without the need of any act, regard or operation of knowledge; for knowledge here is not an act, but a state pure, perpetual and inherent. At the
  566

2.10 - The Realisation of the Cosmic Self, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  This realisation of all things as God or Brahman has, as we have seen, three aspects of which we can conveniently make three successive stages of experience. First, there is the Self in whom all beings exist. The Spirit, the Divine has manifested itself as infinite self-extended being, self-existent, pure not subject to Time and Space, but supporting Time and Space as figures of its consciousness. It is more than all things and contains them all within that self-extended being and consciousness, not bound by anything that it creates, holds or becomes, but free and infinite and all-blissful. It holds them, in the old image, as the infinite ether contains in itself all objects. This image of the ethereal (Akasha) Brahman may indeed be of great practical help to the Sadhaka who finds a difficulty in meditating on what seems to him at first an abstract and unseizable idea. In the image of the ether, not physical but an encompassing ether of vast being, consciousness and bliss, he may seek to see with the mind and to feel m his mental being this supreme existence and to identify it in oneness with the self within him. By such meditation the mind may be brought to a favourable state of predisposition in which, by the rending or withdrawing of the veil, the supramental vision may flood the mentality and change entirely all our seeing. And upon that change of seeing, as it becomes more and more potent and insistent and occupies all our consciousness, there will supervene eventually a change of becoming so that what we see we become. We shall be in our self-consciousness not so much cosmic as ultra-cosmic, infinite. Mind and life and body will then be only movements in that infinity which we have become, and we shall see that what exists is not world at all but simply this infinity of spirit in which move the mighty cosmic harmonies of Its own images of self-conscious becoming.
  But what then of all these forms and existences that make up the harmony? Shall they be to us only images, empty name and form without any informing reality, poor worthless things in themselves and however grandiose, puissant or beautiful they once seemed to our mental vision, now to be rejected and held of no value? Not so, although that would be the first natural result of a very intense absorption in the infinity of the all-containing Self to the exclusion of the infinities that it contains. But these things are not empty, not mere unreal name and form imagined by a cosmic Mind; they are, as we have said, in their reality self-conscious becomings of the Self, that is to say, the Self dwells within all of them even as within us, conscious of them, governing their motion, blissful in his habitation as in his embrace of all that he becomes. As the ether both contains and is as it were contained in the jar, so this Self both contains and inhabits all existences, not in a physical but in a spiritual sense, and is their reality. This indwelling State of the Self we have to realise; we have to see and ourselves to become in our consciousness the Self in all existences. We have, putting aside all vain resistance of the intellect and the mental associations, to know that the Divine inhabits all these becomings and is their true Self and conscious Spirit, and not to know it only intellectually but to know by a self-experience that shall compel into its own diviner mould all the habits of the mental consciousness.
  This Self that we are has finally to become to our self-consciousness entirely one with all existences in spite of its exceeding them. We have to see it not only as that which contains and inhabits all, but that which is all, not only as indwelling spirit, but also as the name and form, the movement and the master of the movement, the mind and life and body. It is by this final realisation that we shall resume entirely in the right poise and the vision of the Truth all that we drew back from in the first movement of recoil and withdrawal. The individual mind, life and body which we recoiled from as not our true being, we shall recover as a true becoming of the Self, but no longer in a purely individual narrowness. We shall take up the mind not as a separate mentality imprisoned in a petty motion, but as a large movement of the universal mind, the life not as an egoistic activity of vitality and sensation and desire, but as a free movement of the universal life, the body not as a physical prison of the soul but as a subordinate instrument and detachable robe, realising that also as a movement of universal Matter, a cell of the cosmic Body. We shall come to feel all the consciousness of the physical world as one with our physical consciousness, feel all the energies of the cosmic life around as our own energies, feel all the heart-beats of the great cosmic impulse and seeking in our heart-beats set to the rhythm of the divine Ananda, feel all the action of the universal mind flowing into our mentality and our thought-action flowing out upon it as a wave into that wide sea. This unity embracing all mind, life and matter in the light of a supramental Truth and the pulse of a spiritual Bliss will be to us our internal fulfilment of the Divine in a complete cosmic consciousness.
  But since we must embrace all this in the double term of the Being and the Becoming, the knowledge that we shall possess must be complete and integral. It must not stop with the realisation of the pure Self and Spirit, but include also all those modes of the Spirit by which it supports, develops and throws itself out into its cosmic manifestation. Self-knowledge and world-knowledge must be made one in the all-ensphering knowledge of the Brahman.

2.11 - The Boundaries of the Ignorance, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  If we undertake this self-discovery and enlarge our knowledge of the subliminal self, so conceiving it as to include in it our lower subconscient and upper superconscient ends, we shall discover that it is really this which provides the whole material of our apparent being and that our perceptions, our memories, our effectuations of will and intelligence are only a selection from its perceptions, memories, activities and relations of will and intelligence; our very ego is only a minor and superficial formulation of its self-consciousness and self-experience. It is, as it were, the urgent sea out of which the waves of our conscious becoming arise. But what are its limits? how far does it extend? what is its fundamental nature? Ordinarily, we speak of a subconscious existence and include in this term all that is not on the waking surface. But the whole or the greater part of the inner or subliminal self can hardly be characterised by that epithet; for when we say subconscious, we think readily
  578
  --
  Mind identifies itself to a certain extent with the movements proper to physical life and body and annexes them to its mentality, so that all consciousness seems to us to be mental. But if we draw back, if we separate the mind as witness from these parts of us, we can discover that life and body - even the most physical parts of life - have a consciousness of their own, a consciousness proper to an obscurer vital and to a bodily being, even such an elemental awareness as primitive animal forms may have, but in us partly taken up by the mind and to that extent mentalised. Yet it has not, in its independent motion, the mental awareness which we enjoy; if there is mind in it, it is mind involved and implicit in the body and in the physical life: there is no organised self-consciousness, but only a sense of action and reaction, movement, impulse and desire, need, necessary activities imposed by Nature, hunger, instinct, pain, insensibility and pleasure. Although thus inferior, it has this awareness obscure, limited and automatic; but since it is less in possession of itself, void of what to us is the stamp of mentality, we may justly call it the submental, but not so justly the subconscious part of our being. For when we stand back from it, when we can separate our mind from its sensations, we perceive that this is a nervous and sensational and automatically dynamic mode of consciousness, a gradation of awareness different from the mind: it has its own separate reactions to contacts and is sensitive to them in its own power of feeling; it does not depend for that on the mind's perception and response. The true subconscious is other than this vital or physical substratum; it is the Inconscient vibrating on the borders of consciousness, sending up its motions to be changed into conscious stuff, swallowing into its depths
  580
  --
  But the subliminal self has not at all this subconscious character: it is in full possession of a mind, a life-force, a clear subtle-physical sense of things. It has the same capacities as our waking being, a subtle sense and perception, a comprehensive extended memory and an intensive selecting intelligence, will, self-consciousness; but even though the same in kind, they are wider, more developed, more sovereign. And it has other capacities which exceed those of our mortal mind because of a power of direct awareness of the being, whether acting in itself or turned upon its object, which arrives more swiftly at knowledge, more swiftly at effectivity of will, more deeply at understanding and satisfaction of impulse. Our surface mind is hardly a true mentality, so involved, bound, hampered, conditioned is it by the body and bodily life and the limitations of the nerve-system and the physical organs. But the subliminal self has a true mentality superior to these limitations; it exceeds the physical mind and physical organs although it is aware of them and their works and is, indeed, in a large degree their cause or creator. It is only subconscious in the sense of not bringing all or most of itself to the surface, it works always behind the veil: it is rather a secret intraconscient and circumconscient than a subconscient; for it envelops quite as much as it supports the outer nature.
  This description is no doubt truest of the deeper parts of the subliminal; in other layers of it nearer to our surface there is a more ignorant action and those who, penetrating within, pause in the zones of lesser coherence or in the No-man's-land between the subliminal and the surface, may fall into much delusion and confusion: but that too, though ignorant, is not of the nature of the subconscious; the confusion of these intermediate zones has no kinship to the Inconscience.

2.11 - The Modes of the Self, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Connected with this triple mode of the Self is that distinction which Indian philosophy has drawn between the Qualitied and the Qualityless Brahman and European thought has made between the Personal and the Impersonal God. The Upanishad indicates clearly enough the relative nature of this opposition, when it speaks of the Supreme as the "Qualitied who is without qualities"363. We have again two essential modes, two fundamental aspects, two poles of eternal being, both of them exceeded in the transcendent divine Reality. They correspond practically to the Silent and the Active Brahman. For the whole action of the universe may be regarded from a certain point of view as the expression and shaping out in various ways of the numberless and infinite qualities of the Brahman. His being assumes by conscious Will all kinds of properties, shapings of the stuff of conscious being, habits as it were of cosmic character and power of dynamic self-consciousness, gunas, into which all the cosmic action can be resolved. But by none of these nor by all of them nor by their utmost infinite potentiality is He bound; He is above all His qualities and on a certain plane of being rests free from them. The Nirguna or Unqualitied is not incapable of qualities, rather it is this very Nirguna or No-Quality who manifests Himself as Saguna, as Ananta-guna, infinite quality, since He contains all in His absolute capacity of boundlessly varied self-revelation. He is free from them in the sense of exceeding them; and indeed if He were not free from .them they could not be infinite; God would be subject to His qualities, bound by His nature, prakriti would be supreme and Purusha its creation and plaything. The Eternal is bound neither by quality nor absence of quality, neither by Personality nor by Impersonality; He is Himself, beyond all our positive and all our negative definitions.
  But if we cannot define the Eternal, we call unify ourselves with it. It has been said that we can become the Impersonal, but not tile personal God, but this is only true in the sense that no one can become individually the Lord of all the universes; we can free ourselves into the existence of the active Brahman as well as that of the Silence; we can live in both, go back to our being in both, but each in its proper way, by becoming one with the Nirguna in our essence and one with the Saguna in the liberty of our active being, in our nature364. The Supreme pours Himself out of an eternal peace, poise and silence into an eternal activity, free and infinite, freely fixing for itself its self-determinations, using infinite quality to shape out of it varied combination of quality. We have to go back to that peace, poise and silence and act out of it with the divine freedom from the bondage of qualities but still using qualities even the most opposite largely and flexibly for the divine work in the world. Only, while the Lord acts out of the centre of all things, we have to act by transmission of His will and power and self-knowledge through the individual centre, the soul-form of Him which we are. The Lord is subject to nothing; the Individual soul-form is subject to its own highest Self and the greater and more absolute is that subjection the greater becomes its sense of absolute force and freedom.

2.13 - Exclusive Concentration of Consciousness-Force and the Ignorance, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  It is on the plane of mind that this putting back of the real self-consciousness becomes possible. For mind is that power of the conscious being which differentiates and runs along the lines of differentiation with the sense of diversity prominent and characteristic and the sense of unity behind it only, not characteristic, not the very stuff of its workings. If by any chance this supporting sense of unity could be drawn back, - it is possessed by mind not in its own separate right, but because it has the supermind behind it, because it reflects the light of the supermind of which it is a derivative and secondary power, - if a veil could fall between mind and supermind shutting off the light of the
  Truth or letting it come through only in rays diffused, scattered, reflected but with distortion and division, then the phenomenon of the Ignorance would intervene. Such a veil exists, says the

2.13 - The Difficulties of the Mental Being, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  We see at once that from this point of view the realisation of the pure quiescent self which we gain by withdrawing from mind, life and body, is for us only the acquisition of the necessary basis for this greater realisation. Therefore that process is not sufficient for our Yoga; something else is needed more ernbracingly positive. As we drew back from all that constitutes our apparent self and the phenomenon of the universe in which it dwells to the self-existent, self-conscious Brahman, so we must now repossess our mind, life and body with the all-embracing self-existence, self-consciousness and self-delight of the Brahman. We must not only have the possession of a pure self-existence independent of the world-play, but possess all existence as our own; not only know ourselves as an infinite unegoistic consciousness beyond all change in Time and Space, but become one with all the outpouring of consciousness and its creative force in Time and Space; not only be capable of a fathomless peace and quiescence, but also of a free and an infinite delight in universal things. For that and not only pure calm is Sachchidananda, is the Brahman.
  If it were easily possible to elevate ourselves to the supramental plane and, dwelling securely there, realise world and being, consciousness and action, outgoing and incoming of conscious experience by the power and in the manner of the divine supramental faculties, this realisation would offer no essential difficulties. But man is a mental and not yet a supramental being. It is by the mind therefore that he has to aim at knowledge and realise his being, with whatever help he can get from the supramental planes. This character of our actually realised being and therefore of our Yoga imposes on us certain limitations and primary difficulties which can only be overcome by divine help or an arduous practice, and in reality only by the combination of both these aids. These difficulties in the way of the integral knowledge, the integral realisation, the integral becoming we have to state succinctly before we can proceed farther.

2.14 - The Unpacking of God, #Sex Ecology Spirituality, #Ken Wilber, #Philosophy
  And those were precisely the requirements met by Schelling and hammered out by Hegel. Nature and Mind are both taken up and integrated in Spirit, an integration that can occur precisely because the Spirit that is awakened in the integration is the same Spirit that was present throughout the entire process of unfolding and enfolding itself. "So that while nature tends to realize spirit, that is, self-consciousness, men and women as conscious beings tend toward a grasp of nature in which they will see it as spirit and one with their own spirit. In this process men and women come to a new understanding of self: they see themselves not just as individual fragments of the universe, but rather as vehicles of spirit. And hence men and women can achieve at once the greatest unity with nature, i.e., with the spirit which unfolds itself in nature, and the fullest autonomous self-expression. The two come together since man's basic identity is as vehicle of spirit. [This] provides the basis of a union between finite and cosmic spirit which meets the requirement that men and women be united to the whole and yet not sacrifice their own selfconsciousness and autonomous will."6
  Recall that the dilemma-and the agony-was how to "unite Fichte and Spinoza"-that is, how to be both autonomous (or self-defining) and whole (or one with nature and therefore defined and determined by nature, which means surrendering autonomy): how can you possibly do both, since they are mutually exclusive? On the one hand, there was the desire to preserve the worldcentric moral autonomy and capacity for compassion for which the

2.17 - The Progress to Knowledge - God, Man and Nature, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  An acceptance, a perception of the unity of these three categories is essential to the Knowledge; it is towards their unity as well as their integrality that the growing self-consciousness of the individual opens out and at which it must arrive if it is to be satisfied of itself and complete. For without the realisation of unity the knowledge of none of the three can be entire; their unity is for each the condition of its own integrality. It is, again, by knowing each in its completeness that all three meet in our consciousness and become one; it is in a total knowledge that all knowing becomes one and indivisible. Otherwise it is only by division and rejection of two of them from the third that we could get at any kind of oneness. Man therefore has to enlarge his knowledge of himself, his knowledge of the world and his knowledge of God until in their totality he becomes aware of their mutual indwelling and oneness. For so long as he knows them only in part, there will be an incompleteness resulting in division, and so long as he has not realised them in a reconciling unity, he will not have found their total truth or the fundamental significances of existence.
  This is not to say that the Supreme is not self-existent and self-sufficient; God exists in Himself and not by virtue of the cosmos or of man, while man and cosmos exist by virtue of God and not in themselves except in so far as their being is one with the being of God. But still they are a manifestation of the power of God and even in His eternal existence their spiritual reality must in some way be present or implied, since otherwise there would be no possibility of their manifestation or, manifested, they would have no significance. What appears here as man is an individual being of the Divine; the Divine extended in multiplicity is the Self of all individual existences.6 Moreover, it is through the knowledge of self and the world that man arrives at the knowledge of God and he cannot attain to it otherwise.

2.19 - The Planes of Our Existence, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  11:These highest worlds are therefore supramental; they belong to the principle of supermind, the free, spiritual or divine intelligences436 or gnosis and to the triple spiritual principle of Sachchidananda. From them the lower worlds derive by a sort of fall of the Purusha into certain specific or narrow conditions of the play of the soul with its nature. But these also are divided from us by no unbridgeable gulf; they affect us through what are called the knowledge-sheath and the bliss-sheath, through the causal or spiritual body, and less directly through the mental body, nor are their secret powers absent from the workings of the vital and material existence. Our conscious spiritual being and our intuitive mind awaken in us as a result of the pressure of these highest worlds on the mental being in life and body. But this causal body is, as we say, little developed in the majority of men and to live in it or to ascend to the supramental planes, as distinguished from corresponding sub-planes in the mental being, or still more to dwell consciously upon them is the most difficult thing of all for the human being. It can be done in the trance of Samadhi, but otherwise only by a new evolution of the capacities of the individual Purusha of which few are even willing to conceive. Yet is that the condition of the perfect self-consciousness by which alone the Purusha can possess the full conscious control of prakriti; for there not even the mind determines, but the Spirit freely uses the lower differentiating principles as minor terms of its existence governed by the higher and reaching by them their own perfect capacity. That alone would be the perfect evolution of the involved and development of the undeveloped for which the Purusha has sought in the material universe, as if in a wager with itself, the conditions of the greatest difficulty.

2.20 - The Lower Triple Purusha, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  A more developed humanity allows us to make a better and freer use of all the capacities and experiences that we derive from the vital and mental planes of being, to lean more for support upon these hidden planes, be less absorbed by the physical and to govern and modify the original nature of the physical being by greater vital forces and powers from the desire-world and greater and subtler mental forces and powers from the psychical and intellectual planes. By this development we are able to rise to higher altitudes of the intermediary existence between death and rebirth and to make a better and more rapid use of rebirth itself for a yet higher mental and spiritual development. But even so, in the physical being which still determines the greater part of our waking self, we act without definite consciousness of the worlds or planes which are the sources of our action. We are aware indeed of the life-plane and mind-plane of the physical being, but not of the life-plane and mind-plane proper or of the superior and larger vital and mental being which we are behind the veil of our ordinary consciousness. It is only at a high stage of development that we become aware of them and even then, ordinarily, only at the back of the action of our mentalised physical nature; we do not actually live on those planes, for if we did we could very soon arrive at the conscious control of the body by the life-power and of both by the sovereign mind; we should then be able to determine our physical and mental life to a very large extent by our will and knowledge as masters of our being and with a direct action of the mind on the life and body. By Yoga this power of transcending the physical self and taking possession of the higher selves may to a greater or less degree be acquired through a heightened and widened self-consciousness and self-mastery.
  This may be done, on the side of Purusha, by drawing back from the physical self and its preoccupation with physical nature and through concentration of thought and will raising oneself into the vital and then into the mental self. By doing so we can become the vital being and draw up the physical self into that new consciousness, so that we are only aware of the body, its nature and its actions as secondary circumstances of the Life-soul which we now are, used by it for its relations with the material world. A certain remoteness from physical being and then a superiority to it; a vivid sense of the body being a mere instrument or shell and easily detachable; an extraordinary effectivity of our desires on our physical being and life-environment; a great sense of power and ease in manipulating and directing the vital energy of which we now become vividly conscious, for its action is felt by us concretely, subtly physical in relation to the body, sensible in a sort of subtle density as an energy used by the mind; all awareness of the life-plane in us above the physical and knowledge and contact with the beings of the desire-world; a coming into action of new powers, -- what are usually called occult-powers or Siddhis; a close sense of and sympathy with the Life-soul in the world and a knowledge or sensation of the emotions, desires, vital impulses of others, these are some of the signs of this new consciousness gained by Yoga.

2.21 - The Ladder of Self-transcendence, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Man is a spirit, but a spirit that lives as a mental being in physical Nature; he is to his own self-consciousness a mind in a physical body. But at first he is this mental being materialised and he takes the materialised soul, pranamaya purusa, for his real self. He is obliged to accept, as the Upanishad expresses it, Matter for the Brahman because his vision here sees Matter as that from which all is born, by which all lives and to which all return in their passing. His natural highest concept of Spirit is an Infinite, preferably an inconscient Infinite, inhabiting or pervading the material universe (which alone it really knows), and manifesting by the power of its presence all these forms around him. His natural highest conception of himself is a vaguely conceived soul or spirit, a soul manifested only by the physical life's experiences, bound up with physical phenomena and forced on its dissolution to return by an automatic necessity to the vast indeterminateness of the Infinite. But because he has the power of self-development, he can rise beyond these natural conceptions of the materialised soul; he call supplement them with a certain derivative experience drawn from supraphysical planes and worlds. He can concentrate in mind and develop the mental part of his being, usually at the expense of the fullness of his vital and physical life and in the end the mind predominates and can open to the Beyond. He can concentrate this self-liberating mind on the Spirit. Here too usually in the process he turns away more and more from his full mental and physical life; he limits or he discourages their possibilities as much as his material foundation in nature will allow him. In the end his spiritual life predominates, destroys his earthward tendency and breaks its ties and limitations. spiritualised, he places his real existence beyond in other worlds, in the heavens of the vital or mental plane; he begins to regard life on earth as a painful or troublesome incident or passage in which he can never arrive at any full enjoyment of his inner ideal self, his spiritual essence. Moreover, his highest conception of the Self or Spirit is apt to be more or less quietistic; for, as we have seen, it is its static infinity alone that he can entirely experience, the still freedom of Purusha unlimited by prakriti, the Soul standing back from Nature. There may come indeed some divine dynamic manifestation in him, but it cannot rise entirely above the heavy limitations of physical Nature. The peace of the silent and passive Self is more easily attainable and he can more easily and fully hold it; too difficult for him is the bliss of all infinite activity, the dynamis of an immeasurable Power.
  But the Spirit can be poised in the principle of Life, not in Matter. The Spirit so founded becomes the vital self of a vital world, the Life-soul of a Life-energy in the reign of a consciously dynamic Nature. Absorbed in the experiences of the power and play of a conscious Life, it is dominated by the desire, activity and passion of the rajasic principle proper to vital existence. In the individual this spirit becomes a vital soul, pranamaya purusa, in whose nature the life-energies tyrannise over the mental and physical principles. The physical element in a vital world readily shapes its activities and formations in response to desire and its imaginations, it serves and obeys the passion and power of life and their formations and does not thwart or limit them as it does here on earth where life is a precarious incident in inanimate Matter. The mental element too is moulded and limited by the life-power, obeys it and helps only to enrich and fulfil the urge of its desires and the energy of its impulses. This vital soul lives in a vital body composed of a substance much subtler than physical matter, it is a substance surcharged with conscious energy, capable of much more powerful perceptions, capacities, sense-activities than any that the gross atomic elements of earth-matter can offer. Man, too, has in himself behind his physical being, subliminal to it, unseen and unknown but very close to it and forming with it the most naturally active part of his existence, this vital soul, this vital nature and this vital body; a whole vital plane connected with the life-world or desire-world is hidden in us, a secret consciousness in which life and desire find their untrammelled play arid their easy self-expression and from there throw their influences and formations on our outer life.

2.23 - The Conditions of Attainment to the Gnosis, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  All changes when we pass from mind to gnosis; for there a direct inherent knowledge is the central principle. The gnostic (vijnanamaya) being is in its character a truth-consciousness, a centre and circumference of the truth-vision of things, a massed movement or subtle body of gnosis. Its action is a self-fulfilling and radiating action of the truth-power of things according to the inner law of their deepest truest self and nature. This truth of things at which we must arrive before we can enter into the gnosis, -- for in that all exists and from that all originates on the gnostic plane, -- is, first of all, a truth of unity, of oneness, but of unity originating diversity, unity in multiplicity and still unity always, an indefeasible oneness. State of gnosis, the condition of vijnanamaya being, is impossible without ample and close self-identification of ourselves with all existence and with all existences, a universal pervasiveness, a universal comprehension or containing, a certain all-in-allness. The gnostic Purusha has normally the consciousness of itself as infinite, normally too the consciousness of containing the world in itself and exceeding it; it is not like the divided mental being normally bound to a consciousness that feels itself contained in the world and a part of it. It follows that a deliverance from the limiting and imprisoning ego is the first elementary step towards the being of the gnosis; for so long as we live in the ego, it is idle to hope for this higher reality, this vast self-consciousness, this true self-knowledge. The least reversion to ego-thought, ego-action, ego-will brings back the consciousness tumbling out of such gnostic Truth as it has attained into the falsehoods of the divided mind-nature. A secure universality of being is the very basis of this luminous higher consciousness. Abandoning all rigid separateness (but getting instead a certain transcendent overlook or independence) we have to feel ourselves one with all things and beings, to identify ourselves with them, to become aware of them as ourselves, to feel their being as our own, to admit their consciousness as part of ours, to contact their energy as intimate to our energy, to learn how to be one self with all. That oneness is not indeed all that is needed, but it is a first condition and without it there is no gnosis.
  This universality is impossible to achieve in its completeness so long as we continue to feel ourselves, as we now feel, a consciousness lodged in an individual mind, life and body. There has to be a certain elevation of the Purusha out of the physical and even out of the mental into the vijnanamaya body. No longer can the brain nor its corresponding mental "lotus" remain the centre of our thinking, no longer the heart nor its corresponding "lotus" the originating centre of our emotional and sensational being. The conscious centre of our being, our thought, our will and action, even the original force of our sensations and emotions rise out of the body and mind and take a free station above them. No longer have we the sensation of living in the body, but are above it as its lord, possessor or Ishwara and at the same time encompass it with a wider consciousness than that of the imprisoned physical sense. Now we come to realise with a very living force of reality, normal and continuous, what the sages meant when they spoke of the soul carrying the body or when they said that the soul is not in the body, but the body in the soul. It is from above the body and not from the brain that we shall ideate and will; the brain-action will become only a response and movement of the physical machinery to the shock of the thought-force and will-force from above. All will be originated from above; from above, all that corresponds in gnosis to our present mental activity takes place. Many, if not all, of these conditions of the gnostic change can and indeed have to be attained long before we reach the gnosis, -- but imperfectly at first as if by a reflection, -in higher mind itself and more completely in what we may call an overmind consciousness between mentality and gnosis.

2.24 - Gnosis and Ananda, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  And what then is the necessity of a still higher step and what difference is there between the soul in gnosis and the soul in the Bliss? There is no essential difference, but yet a difference, because there is a transfer to another consciousness and a certain reversal in position, -- for each step of the ascent from Matter to the highest Existence there is a reversal of consciousness. The soul no longer looks up to something beyond it, but is in it and from it looks down on all that it was before. On all planes indeed the Ananda can be discovered because everywhere it exists and is the same. Even there is a repetition of the Ananda plane on each lower world of consciousness. But in the lower planes not only is it reached by a sort of dissolution into it of the pure mind or the life-sense or the physical awareness, but it is, as it were, itself diluted by the dissolved form of mind, life or matter held in the dilution and turned into a poor thinness wonderful to the lower consciousness but not comparable to its true intensities. The gnosis has on the contrary a dense light of essential consciousness483a in which the intense fullness of the Ananda can be. And when the form of gnosis is dissolved into the Ananda, it is not annulled altogether, but undergoes a natural change by which the soul is carried up into its last and absolute freedom; for it casts itself into the absolute existence of the spirit and is enlarged into its own entirely self-existent bliss infinitudes. The gnosis has the infinite and absolute as the conscious source, accompaniment, condition, standard, field and atmosphere of all its activities, it possesses it as its base, fount, constituent material, indwelling and inspiring Presence; but in its action it seems to stand out from it as its operation, as the rhythmical working of its activities, as a divine Maya483b or Wisdom-Formation of the Eternal. Gnosis is the divine Knowledge-Will of the divine Consciousness-Force; it is harmonic consciousness and action of prakriti-Purusha -- full of the delight of the divine existence. In the Ananda the knowledge goes back from these willed harmonies into pure self-consciousness, the will dissolves into pure transcendent force and both are taken up into the pure delight of the Infinite. The basis of the gnostic existence is the self-stuff and self-form of the Ananda.
  This in the ascension takes place because there is here completed the transition to the absolute unity of which the gnosis is the decisive step, but not the final resting-place. In the gnosis the soul is aware of its infinity and lives in it, yet it lives also in a working centre for the individual play of the Infinite. It realises its identity with all existences, but it keeps a distinction without difference by which it can have also the contact with them in a certain diverseness. This is that distinction for the joy of contact which in the mind becomes not only difference, but in its self-experience division from our other selves, in its spiritual being a sense of loss of self one with us in others and a reaching after the felicity it has forfeited, in life a compromise between egoistic self-absorption and a blind seeking out for the lost oneness. In its infinite consciousness, the gnostic soul creates a sort of voluntary limitation for its own wisdom-purposes; it has even its particular luminous aura of being in which it moves, although beyond that it enters into all things and identifies itself with all being and all existences. In the Ananda all is reversed, the centre disappears. In the bliss nature there is no centre, nor any voluntary or imposed circumference, but all is, all are one equal being, one identical spirit. The bliss soul finds and feels itself everywhere; it has no mansion, is ahiketa, or has the all for its mansion, or, if it likes, it has all things for its many mansions open to each other for ever. All other selves are entirely its own selves, in action as well as in essence. The joy of contact in diverse oneness becomes altogether the joy of absolute identity in innumerable oneness. Existence is no longer formulated in the terms of the Knowledge, because the known and knowledge and the knower are wholly one self here and, since all possesses all All in the gnostic existence is real, spiritually concrete, eternally verifiable. in an intimate identity beyond the closest closeness, there is no need of what we call knowledge. All the consciousness is of the bliss of the Infinite, all power is power of the bliss of the Infinite, all forms and activities are forms and activities of the bliss of the Infinite. In this absolute truth of its being the eternal soul of Ananda lives, here deformed by contrary phenomena, there brought back and transfigured into their reality.

2.26 - The Ascent towards Supermind, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  But there can be many formulations of overmind consciousness and experience; for the overmind has a great plasticity and is a field of multiple possibilities. In place of an uncentred and unplaced diffusion there may be the sense of the universe in oneself or as oneself: but there too this self is not the ego; it is an extension of a free and pure essential self-consciousness or it is an identification with the All, - the extension or the identification constituting a cosmic being, a universal individual.
  In one state of the cosmic consciousness there is an individual included in the cosmos but identifying himself with all in it, with the things and beings, with the thought and sense, the joy and grief of others; in another state there is an inclusion of beings in oneself and a reality of their life as part of one's own being.

32.05 - The Culture of the Body, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   For, we must realise that the body can become healthy, strong and efficient with any kind of true permanence and integrality, only when its self-consciousness can be changed into the right consciousness. By right consciousness I mean a true and harmonious consciousness. It can come, in the first place, from the depths of our inner and inmost being; that is the consciousness of the inner self, the indwelling inner Being. It may be called the inner consciousness. And secondly, the right consciousness can come, not from within or at least not primarily from there but from the environment, from a wider expanse, a universal wideness extending beyond the limits of the individual ego. This we shall call the environmental consciousness. The right consciousness may on the other hand come from above, in the for of a higher consciousness. The "above" too has many levels or planes. The highest of these is called the Supreme Consciousness. There may be added an intermediary level of the higher consciousness which we term in general the Supramental, a consciousness which begins the first step rising beyond the mind-planes including the Overmind.
   These then are the main gradations or steps in the growth of consciousness: (1) unconsciousness, (2) consciousness, (3) active consciousness, (4) inner consciousness, (5) environmental consciousness, (6) Supramental consciousness, (7) Supreme or Transcendental consciousness. These correspond to the seven layers of our being, sapta-kosa,the seven worlds or the seven oceans; these are the seven tongues of the Fire-God, Agni, the seven horses of the Sun-God, Surya. Any of these planes of consciousness can take charge of the being and its principal knot, the ego, with attendant consequences.

32.12 - The Evolutionary Imperative, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Now, the difference that presents itself at the present juncture is that man has acquired knowledge, the knowledge of the future, of his own destiny, unlike the animal or the plant. That is the characteristic mark of the stage of evolution now reached. And that will make a difference also in the manner in which the evolution will be worked out henceforth: it will be a conscious process. As man, because of his self-consciousness, has taken up many of nature's contrivances, refined and condensed them to be made immediately and more thoroughly effective without waste of time or material, even so, in the inner life too there has come the possibility of an intenser and quicker change, an evolution that is likely to be a revolution.
   With man came also the sense of what is beyond man, the superman, the divine man, the Divine. That is the true meaning of his appearance, that is the characteristic turn of consciousness which he brought with him. This self-consciousness, an inner perception and aspiration that he is to be something else, something other and greater than what he is, means the emergence of a spiritual soul in the world of matter. This prophetic or forward-looking consciousness is absent in the sub-human creation, although, as I have said, a secret blind unknowing forward urge has always been there as the original motive of all functioning in things and creatures upon earth.
   The problem is whether man will take advantage of the privilege he has acquired. In one sense he has been trying as best he can since his very appearance, a million years ago perhaps: he has created wonderful cultures and civilisations all over the earth age after age; expressing not merely the human animal in him, nor solely even the human, but something higher and deeper still, the extra-human or superhuman, the Divine. India was particularly the country where the experiment was carried on consistently and more successfully than anywhere else. And yet what has been the net result, the real achievement in view of the supreme purpose and ideal? The achievement has been this that the purpose, the ideal has come to be known, it is now within the range of our, vision; creation has revealed its core of mystery - if not the whole of it, at least the central theme: the key has been found, but in its own home, that is to say, behind and beyond the creation. That, however, is only half the battle or even less; the other half is to bring the truth out of its own home and spread abroad, make the universe its own home. In other words, man has learnt to accept or is capable of accepting the reality in his inner consciousness, but only a very faint shadow of it - if anything at all - he has succeeded in establishing as a concrete or physical reality. Man's life, even the life of the very best, is still that of a mortal creature, still subject to ignorance, incapacity, disease and death - so long at least as he lives in his material frame in a material world.

3.5.01 - Aphorisms, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Be conscious first of thyself within, then think and act. All living thought is a world in preparation; all real act is a thought manifested. The material world exists because an Idea began to play in divine self-consciousness.
  Thought is not essential to existence nor its cause, but it is an instrument for becoming; I become what I see in myself. All that thought suggests to me, I can do; all that thought reveals in me, I can become. This should be mans unshakable faith in himself, because God dwells in him.

3.7.1.07 - Involution and Evolution, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  This spirit in things is not apparent from the beginning, but self-betrayed in an increasing light of manifestation. We see the compressed powers of Nature start released from their original involution, disclose in a passion of work the secrets of their infinite capacity, press upon themselves and on the supporting inferior principle to subject its lower movement on which they are forced to depend into a higher working proper to their own type and feel their proper greatness in the greatness of their selfrevealing effectuations. Life takes hold of matter and breathes into it the numberless figures of its abundant creative force, its subtle and variable patterns, its enthusiasm of birth and death and growth and act and response, its will of more and more complex organisation of experience, its quivering search and feeling out after a self-consciousness of its own pleasure and pain and understanding gust of action; mind seizes on life to make
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3.7.2.03 - Mind Nature and Law of Karma, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Man, then, since he is a mental being, a means of the evolution of the mental self-expression of the spirit, cannot confine the rule of his action and nature to an obedience to the vital and physical law and an intelligent utilisation of it for the greater, more ordered, more perfect enjoyment of his vital and physical existence, perpetuation, reproduction, possession, enjoyment, expansion. There is a higher law of mental being and nature of which he is bound to become aware and to seek to impose it on his life and his action. At first he is very predominantly governed by the life needs and the movement of the life energies, and it is in applying his mental energy to them and to the world around him that he makes the earliest development of his powers of knowledge and will and trains the crude impulses that lead him into the path of his emotional, aesthetic and moral evolution. But always there is a certain obscure element that takes pleasure in the action of the mental energies for their own sake and it is this, however imperfect at first in self-consciousness and intelligence, that represents the characteristic intention of Nature in him and makes his mental and eventually his spiritual evolution inevitable. The insistence of the external world around him and the need of utilising its opportunities and of meeting its siege and dangers causes his mind to be much obsessed by life and external action and the utility of thought and will and perception for his dealings with the physical and life forces, and to this preoccupation the finer more disinterested action and subtler cast of motive of the mind nature demanding its own inner development, seeking for knowledge, mastery, beauty, a purer emotional delight for their own sake, and the pursuits which are characteristic of this higher energy of the mental nature, appear almost as by-products and at any rate things secondary that can always be postponed and made subordinate to the needs and demands of the mentalised vital and physical being. But the finer and more developed mind in humanity has always turned towards an opposite self-seeing, inclined to regard this as the most characteristic and valuable element of our being and been ready to sacrifice much and sometimes all to its calls or its imperative mandate. Then life itself would be in reality for man only a field of action for the evolution, the opportunity of new experience, the condition of difficult effort and mastery of the mental and spiritual being. What then will be the lines of this mental energy and how will they affect and be affected by the lines of the vital and physical Karma?
  Three movements of the mental energy of man projecting itself along the lines of life, successive movements that yet overlap and enter into each other, have created a triple strand of the law of his Karma. The first is that, primary, obvious, universal, predominant in his beginnings, in which his mind subjects and assimilates itself to the law of life in matter in order to make the most of the terrestrial existence for its own pleasure and profit, artha, kma, without any other modification or correction of its pre-existing lines than is involved in the very impact of the human intelligence, will, emotion, aesthesis. These indeed are forces that lift up and greatly enlarge and infinitely rarefy and subtilise by a consciously regulated and more and more skilful and curious use the first crude, narrow and essentially animal aims and movements common to all living creatures. And this element of the mentalised vital existence, these lines of its movement making the main grey solid stuff of the life of the average economic, political, social, domestic man may take on a great amplitude and an imposing brilliance, but they remain always in their distinctive, their original and still persistent character the lines of movement, the way of Karma of the thinking, willing, feeling, refining human animal,not to be despised or excluded from our total way of being when we climb to a higher plane of conception and action, but still only a small part of human possibility and, if regarded as the main preoccupation or most imperative law of the human being, then limiting and degrading it; for, empowered up to a certain point to enlarge and dynamise and enrich, but not raise to a self-exceeding, they are useful for ascension only when themselves uplifted and transformed by a greater law and a nobler motive. The momentum of this energy may be a very powerful mental action, may involve much output of intelligence and will power and aesthetic perception and expenditure of emotional force, but the return it seeks is vital success and enjoyment and possession and satisfaction. The mind no doubt feeds its powers on the effort and its fullness on the prize, but it is tethered to its pasture. It is a mixed movement, mental in its means, predominantly vital in its returns; its standard of the values of the return are measured by an outward success and failure, an externalised or externally caused pleasure and suffering, good fortune and evil fortune, the fate of the life and the body. It is this powerful vital preoccupation which has given us one element of the current notion of law of Karma, its idea of an award of vital happiness and suffering as the measure of cosmic justice.

3 - Commentaries and Annotated Translations, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  of divine being is one & infinite embracing all existences, sarvabhutani, in one unifying self-consciousness, Atmani; therefore,
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  --
  divine conception. The Cosmic self-consciousness knows itself
  in the form of a Tree & that vijnana or typal idea is manifested
  --
  Chit or self-consciousness, but for all cosmic purposes avyakta,
  unexpressed, undefined. To define it is first necessary that the
  general undifferentiated self-consciousness should dwell by particular concentration of consciousness, by Tapas or Force of
  self-knowledge, on the thing in itself latent in undifferentiated

4.03 - The Psychology of Self-Perfection, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Man is in his real nature, -- however obscure now this truth may be to our present understanding and self-consciousness, we must for the purposes of Yoga have faith in it, and we shall then find that our faith is justified by an increasing experience and a greater self-knowledge, --a spirit using the mind, life and body for an individual and a communal experience and self-manifestation in the universe. This spirit is an infinite existence limiting itself in apparent being for individual experience. It is an infinite consciousness which defines itself in finite forms of consciousness for joy of various knowledge and various power of being. It is an infinite delight of being expanding and contracting itself and its powers, concealing and discovering, formulating many terms of its joy of existence, even to an apparent obscuration arid denial of its own nature. In itself it is eternal Sachchidananda, but this complexity, this knotting up and unravelling of the infinite in the finite is the aspect we see it assume in universal and in individual nature. To discover the eternal Sachchidananda, this essential self of our being within us, and live in it is the stable basis, to make its true nature evident and creative of a divine way of living in our instruments, supermind, mind, life and body, the active principle of a spiritual perfection. Supermind, mind, life and body are the four instruments which the spirit uses for its manifestation in the workings of Nature. Supermind is spiritual consciousness acting as a self-luminous knowledge, will, sense, aesthesis, energy, self-creative and unveiling power of its own delight and being. Mind is the action of the same powers, but limited and only very indirectly and partially illumined. Supermind lives in unity though it plays with diversity; mind lives in a separative action of diversity, though it may open to unity. Mind is not only capable of ignorance, but, because it acts always partially and by limitation, it works characteristically as a power of ignorance : it may even and it does forget itself in a complete inconscience, or nescience, awaken from it to the ignorance of a partial knowledge and move from the ignorance towards a complete knowledge, -- that is its natural action in the human being, -- but it can never have by itself a complete knowledge. supermind is incapable of real ignorance; even if it puts full knowledge behind it in the limitation of a particular working, yet all its working refers back to what it has put behind it and all is instinct with self-illumination; even if it involves itself in material nescience, it yet does there accurately the works of a perfect will and knowledge. supermind lends itself to the action of the inferior instruments; it is always there indeed at the core as a secret support of their operations. In matter it is an automatic action and effectuation of the hidden idea in things; in life its most seizable form is instinct, an instinctive, subconscious or partly subconscious knowledge and operation; in mind it reveals itself as intuition, a swift, direct and self-effective illumination of intelligence, will, sense and aesthesis. But these are merely irradiations of the supermind which accommodate themselves to the limited functioning of the obscurer instruments: its own characteristic nature is a gnosis superconscient to mind, life and body. Supermind or gnosis is the characteristic, illumined, significant action of spirit in its own native reality.
  Life is an energy of spirit subordinated to action of mind and body, which fulfils itself through mentality and physicality and acts as a link between them. It has its own characteristic operation but nowhere works independently of mind and body. All energy of the spirit in action works in the two terms of existence and consciousness, for the self-formation of existence and the play and self-realisation of consciousness, for the delight of existence and the delight of consciousness. In this inferior formulation of being in which we at present live, the spirit's energy of life works between the two terms of mind and matter, supporting and effecting the formulations of substance of matter and working as a material energy, supporting the formulations of consciousness of mind and the workings of mental energy, supporting the interaction of mind and body and working as a sensory and nervous energy. What we call vitality is for the purposes of our normal human existence power of conscious being emerging in matter, liberating from it and in it mind and the higher powers and supporting their limited action in the physical life, --just as what we call mentality is power of conscious being awaking in body to light of its own consciousness and to consciousness of all the rest of being immediately around it and working at first in the limited action set for it by life and body, but at certain points and at a certain height escaping from it to a partial action beyond this circle. But this is not the whole power whether of life or mentality; they have planes of conscious existence of their own kind, other than this material level, where they are freer in their characteristic action. Matter or body itself is a limiting form of substance of spirit in which life and mind and spirit are involved, self-hidden, self-forgetful by absorption in their own externalising action, but bound to emerge from it by a self-compelling evolution. But matter too is capable of refining to subtler forms of substance in which it becomes more apparently a formal density of life, of mind, of spirit. Man himself has, besides this gross material body, an encasing vital sheath, a mental body, a body of bliss and gnosis. But all matter, all body contains within it the secret powers of these higher principles; matter is a formation of life that has no real existence apart from the informing universal spirit which gives it its energy and substance.

Blazing P2 - Map the Stages of Conventional Consciousness, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  (Subjectivity, self-consciousness)
  Object: Concrete; Point of view; Enduring dispositions, needs, preferences

BOOK II. -- PART I. ANTHROPOGENESIS., #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  mental darkness, they inflicted upon him the tortures of the self-consciousness of his responsibility -the result of his free will -- besides every ill to which mortal man and flesh are heir to. This torture
  Prometheus accepted for himself, since the Host became henceforward blended with the tabernacle

BOOK II. -- PART III. ADDENDA. SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  Here Science is once more silent. But since there is no self-consciousness as yet in either speck, seed,
  or germ, according to both Materialists and Psychologists of the modern school -- Occultists agreeing

BOOK II. -- PART II. THE ARCHAIC SYMBOLISM OF THE WORLD-RELIGIONS, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  Manas, Mind and self-consciousness. In each of us that golden thread of continuous life -periodically broken into active and passive cycles of sensuous existence on Earth, and super-sensuous
  in Devachan -- is from the beginning of our appearance upon this earth. It is the Sutratma, the
  --
  magnetism, astral radiation, motion, and Intelligence, or what some call self-consciousness.
  We have said it elsewhere. Long before the cross or its sign were adopted as symbols of Christianity,
  --
  matter and develops self-consciousness, it becomes Egoism, Selfishness, so Manas is of a dual nature.
  It is respectively under the sun and moon, for as Sankaracharya says "The moon is the mind, and the

BOOK I. -- PART I. COSMIC EVOLUTION, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  * In clearer words: "One has to acquire true self-consciousness in order to understand Samvriti, or the
  'origin of delusion.'" Paramartha is the synonym of the Sanskrit term Svasam-vedana, or "the
  --
  *"Paramartha" is self-consciousness in Sanskrit, Svasamvedana, or the "self-analysing reflection" -from two words, parama (above everything) and artha (comprehension), Satya meaning absolute true
  being, or Esse. In Tibetan Paramarthasatya is Dondampaidenpa. The opposite of this absolute reality,
  --
  ** Finite self-consciousness, I mean. For how can the absolute attain it otherwise than as simply an
  aspect, the highest of which known to us is human consciousness?
  --
  evolving the Universe, except in the hope of attaining clear self-consciousness. In this connection it is
  to be borne in mind that in designating Spirit, which the European Pantheists use as equivalent to
  --
  clear self-consciousness?* A Vedantin would never admit this Hegelian idea; and the Occultist would
  say that it applies perfectly to the awakened MAHAT, the Universal Mind already projected into the
  --
  and surrendering himself to pure self-consciousness does he attain the truth. Christ-man, as man in
  whom the Unity of God-man (identity of the individual with the Universal consciousness as taught by
  --
  Unconscious evolved the Universe only "in the hope of attaining clear self-consciousness," of
  becoming, in other words, MAN; for this is also the secret meaning of the usual Puranic phrase about
  --
  potentiality of self-consciousness in it, and is, like the Monads of Leibnitz, a Universe in itself, and for
  itself. It is an atom and an angel.
  --
  "Men" in order that their "Monads" may reach a higher plane of activity and self-consciousness, i.e.,
  the plane of the Manasa-Putras, those who
  --
  full self-consciousness as a human, i.e., conscious Being, which is synthesized for us in Man. The
  Jewish Kabalists arguing that no Spirit could belong to the divine hierarchy unless Ruach (Spirit) was
  --
  human -- form; and, if there was instinct in him, no self-consciousness came to enlighten the darkness
  of the latent fifth principle. When, moved by the law of Evolution, the Lords of Wisdom infused into
  --
  realisation of existence, the "Ego-Sum," necessitates self-consciousness, and an animal can only have
  direct consciousness, or instinct. This was so well understood by the Ancients that the Kabalist even

BOOK I. -- PART III. SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  the seven classes of Pitris, one class of which endow man in the Third Race with self-consciousness
  by incarnating in the human shells. The "Hymn to the Sun," at the end of his queer volume of mosaic,

BS 1 - Introduction to the Idea of God, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  Your motivations speak to; your emotions speak to you; your body speaks to you, and it does all that, at least in part, through the dream. The dream is the birthplace of the fully articulated idea. They dont just come from nowhere fully-fledged. They have a developmental origin, and God only knows how lengthy that origin is. Even to say, I am conscious Chimpanzees dont say that. Its been something like 3 million years since we broke from chimpanzeesfrom the common ancestor. They have no articulated knowledge, very little self-representation, and very little self-consciousness. Thats not the case with us, at all. We had to painstakingly figure all of this out during that 7 million year voyage. I think some of thats represented and captured in these ancient storiesespecially the oldest stories, in Genesis, which are the stories were going to start with. Some of the archaic nature of the human being is encapsulated in those stories. Its very, very instructive, as far as I can tell.
  Ill give you just a quick example. Theres an idea of sacrifice in the Old Testament, and its pretty barbaric. The story of Abraham and Isaac is a good example. Abraham was called on to actually sacrifice his own son, which doesnt really seem like something that a reasonable God would ask you to do. God, in the Old Testament, is frequently cruel, arbitrary, demanding, and paradoxical, which is one of the things that really gives the book life. It wasnt edited by a committee that was concerned with not offending anyone. Thats for sure.
  --
  Lets take a look at the structure of the book itself. The first thing about the Bible is that its a comedy, and a comedy has a happy ending. Thats a strange thing, because the Greek God stories were almost always tragic. The Bible is a comedy. It has a happy ending. Everyone lives, and theres a heaven. What you think about that is a completely different issue. Im just telling you the structure of the story. Its something like, there was paradise at the beginning of time, and then some cataclysms occurred, and people fell into history. History is limitation, mortality, suffering, and self-consciousness. But theres a mode of beingor potentially the establishment of a state that will transcend that, and thats what time is aiming at. Thats the idea of the story.
  Its a funny thing that the Bible has a story, because it wasnt written as a class: it was assembled from a whole bunch of different books. The fact that it got assembled into something resembling a story is quite remarkable. The question is, what is that story about? And how did it come up as a story? Is there anything to it? It constituted a dramatic record of self-realization or abstraction. I already mentioned that. The idea of the formulation of the image of God is an abstraction. Thats how were going to handle it, to begin with. I want to saybecause I said I wasnt going to be any more reductionist than necessary that I know the evidence for genuine religious experience is incontrovertible, but its not explicable, and so I dont want to explain it away. I want to just leave it as a fact, and then I want to pull back from that and say, ok, well leave that as a fact and mystery. Were going to look at this from a rational perspective and say that the initial formulation of the idea of God was an attempt to abstract out an ideal, and to consider it as an abstraction outside of its instantiation. Thats good enough. Thats an amazing thing, if its true. But I dont want to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

ENNEAD 01.04 - Whether Animals May Be Termed Happy., #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04, #Plotinus, #Christianity
  10. The reason that intelligence remains hidden is just because it is not felt; only by the means of this feeling can this activity be felt; but why should intelligence cease to act (merely because it was not felt)? On the other hand, why could the soul not have turned her activity towards intelligence before having felt or1034 perceived it? Since (for intelligence) thinking and existence are identical, perception must have been preceded by some actualization. It seems impossible for perception to arise except when thought reflects upon itself, and when the principle whose activity constitutes the life of the soul, so to speak, turns backwards, and reflects, as the image of an object placed before a brilliant polished mirror reflects itself therein. Likewise, if the mirror be placed opposite the object, there is no more image; and if the mirror be withdrawn or badly adjusted, there is no more image, though the luminous object continue to act. Likewise, when that faculty of the soul which represents to us the images of discursive reason and of intelligence is in a suitable condition of calm, we get an intuition that is, a somewhat sensual perception thereofwith the prior knowledge of the activity of the intelligence, and of discursive reason. When, however, this image is troubled by an agitation in the mutual harmony of the organs, the discursive reason, and the intelligence continue to act without any image, and the thought does not reflect in the imagination. Therefore we shall have to insist that thought is accompanied by an image without, nevertheless, being one itself. While we are awake, it often happens to us to perform praiseworthy things, to meditate and to act, without being conscious of these operations at the moment that we produce them. When for instance we read something, we are not necessarily self-conscious that we are reading, especially if our attention be fully centered on what we read. Neither is a brave man who is performing a courageous deed, self-conscious of his bravery. There are many other such cases. It would therefore seem that the consciousness of any deed weakens its energy, and that when the action is alone (without that consciousness) it is in a purer, livelier and more vital condition. When virtuous men are in that condition (of1035 absence of self-consciousness), their life is more intense because it concentrates in itself instead of mingling with feeling.
  THE ONLY OBJECT OF THE VIRTUOUS WILL IS THE CONVERSION OF THE SOUL TOWARDS HERSELF.

ENNEAD 03.01 - Concerning Fate., #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01, #Plotinus, #Christianity
  THIS WOULD INTERFERE WITH self-consciousness AND RESPONSIBILITY.
  To begin with, this Necessity and Fate would by their excess destroy themselves, and render impossible the sequence and concatenation of the causes. It is, indeed, absurd to insist that our members are moved by Fate when they are set in motion, or innervated, by the "governing principle." It is a mistake to suppose that there is a part which imparts motion, and on the other hand, a part which receives it from the former; it is the governing principle that moves the leg, as it would any other part. Likewise, if in the universe exists but a single principle which "acts and reacts," if things derive from each other by a series of causes each92 of which refers to the preceding one, it will no longer be possible to say truly that all things arise through causes, for their totality will constitute but a single being. In that case, we are no longer ourselves; actions are no longer ours; it is no longer we who reason; it is a foreign principle which reasons, wills, and acts in us, just as it is not our feet that walk, but we who walk by the agency of our feet. On the contrary, common sense admits that every person lives, thinks, and acts by his own individual, proper life, thought and action; to each must be left the responsibility of his actions, good or evil, and not attri bute shameful deeds to the universal cause.

ENNEAD 03.08b - Of Nature, Contemplation and Unity., #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02, #Plotinus, #Christianity
  These words signify that nature is a soul begotten by a superior Soul that possesses a more potent life, and contains her contemplation silently within herself, without inclining towards that which is higher or lower. Abiding within her own essence ("being") that is, within her own rest and self-consciousness, having discovered, so far as it was possible for her, what was536 below her, without going out of her way to seek it, nature produced an agreeable and brilliant object. If it is desired to attri bute some sort of cognition or sensation to nature, these will resemble true cognition and sensation only as those of a man who is awake resemble those of a man who is asleep.182 For nature peaceably contemplates her object, which was born in her as effect of nature's abiding within and with herself, of herself being an object of contemplation, and herself being a silent, if weak contemplation. There is, indeed, another power that contemplates more strongly; the nature which is the image of another contemplation. Consequently, what she has produced is very weak, because a weakened contemplation can beget a weak object only.
  IT IS MEN WHO ARE TOO WEAK FOR CONTEMPLATION THAT SEEK A REFUGE IN ACTION.

ENNEAD 03.09 - Fragments About the Soul, the Intelligence, and the Good., #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01, #Plotinus, #Christianity
  THE GOOD IS SUPERIOR EVEN TO self-consciousness AND LIFE.
  Will the Good not be self-conscious? It is claimed by some that the Good would be good only if it possessed self-consciousness. But if it be Goodness, it is goodness before having self-consciousness. If the Good be good only because it has self-consciousness, it was not good before having self-consciousness; but, on the other hand, if there be no goodness, no possible consciousness can therefore exist. (Likewise, someone may ask) does not the First live? He cannot be said to live, because He Himself gives life.
  THE SUPREME IS THEREFORE ABOVE THOUGHT.

ENNEAD 04.03 - Psychological Questions., #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02, #Plotinus, #Christianity
  THERE IS A TIMELESS MEMORY CONSISTING OF self-consciousness.
  It (may be objected) that nothing hinders Intelligence from knowing the changes of other beings, such as, for instance, the periodical revolutions of the world, without itself undergoing any change. But then it would have to follow the changes of the moving object, as it would think first of one thing, and then of another. Besides, thought is something else than memory, and we must not apply to self-consciousness the name of memory. Indeed, intelligence does not busy itself with retaining its thoughts, and with hindering them from escaping; otherwise it might also fear lest it lose its own nature ("Being"). For the soul herself, remembering is not the same as recalling innate notions. When the soul has descended here below, she may possess these notions without thinking of them, especially if it be only recently that she entered into the body.141 The ancient philosophers seem to have applied the terms memory and reminiscence to the actualization by which the soul thinks of the entities she possesses; that (however) is a quite special kind of memory, entirely independent of time.142
  DEFINITION OF MEMORY DEPENDS ON WHETHER IT BELONGS TO THE SOUL OR ORGANISM.

ENNEAD 04.04 - Questions About the Soul., #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02, #Plotinus, #Christianity
  Under the above circumstances, the soul changes thoughts something that we above refused to admit. Intelligence is indeed immutable; but the soul, situated on the extremities of the intelligible world, may undergo some change when she reflects upon herself. Indeed, what applies to the immutable necessarily undergoes some change in respect to it, because it does not always remain applied to it. To speak exactly, there is no change when the soul detaches herself from the things that belong to her to turn towards herself, and conversely; for the soul is all things, and the soul forms but one thing with the intelligible. But when the soul is in the intelligible world, she becomes estranged from herself and from all that belongs to her; then, living purely in the intelligible world, she participates445 in its immutability, and she becomes all that it is; for, as soon as she has raised herself to this superior region, she must necessarily unite herself to Intelligence, towards which she has turned, and from which she is no longer separated by an intermediary. On rising towards intelligence, the soul attunes herself to it, and consequently unites herself with it durably, in a manner such that both are simultaneously single and double. In this state the soul cannot change; she is immutably devoted to thought, and she simultaneously has self-consciousness, because she forms a unity with the intelligible world.
  THE SOUL BECOMES WHAT SHE REMEMBERS.
  --
  37. The universe therefore (contains all that it needs), and rejects (or wastes) nothing. Study, therefore, the fire, and all the other things considered capable of action. Satisfactory investigation of their action would demand recognition that these things derive their power from the universe, and a similar admission for all that belongs to the domain of experience. But we do not usually examine the objects to which we are accustomed, nor raise questions about them. We investigate the nature of a power only when it seems unusual, when its novelty excites our astonishment. Nevertheless we would not be any less astonished at the objects that we see so often if their power were explained to us at a time when we were not yet so thoroughly accustomed to it. Our conclusion therefore is that every thing has a secret (sub-conscious) power inasmuch as it is moulded by, and receives a shape in the universe; participating in the Soul of the universe, being embraced by her, as being a part of this animated All; for there is nothing in this All which is not a part thereof. It is true that there are parts, both on the earth and in the heavens, that act more efficiently than do others; the heavenly things are more potent because they enjoy a better developed nature. These powers produce many things devoid of choice, even in beings that seem to act (purposively); though they are also active in beings that lack that ability to choose. (Even these powers themselves act unconsciously): they do not even turn (towards themselves) while communicating power, when some part of their own soul is emanating (to that which they are501 begetting). Similarly animals beget other animals without implying an act of choice, without any weakening on the part of the generator, and even without self-consciousness. Otherwise, if this act was voluntary, it would consist of a choice, or the choice would not be effective. If then an animal lack the faculty of choice, much less will it have self-consciousness.
  PRODUCTION IS DUE TO SOME PHYSICAL SOUL, NOT TO ANY ASTROLOGICAL POWER.

ENNEAD 04.07 - Of the Immortality of the Soul: Polemic Against Materialism., #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01, #Plotinus, #Christianity
  (i.) (Souls cannot, as do bodies, lose or gain parts, ever remaining identical.) The body has the faculty of making its organs grow within a definite time and in fixed proportions. From where could the soul derive them? Its function is to grow, not to cause growth, unless the principle of growth be comprehended within its material mass. If the soul that makes the body grow was herself a body, she should, on uniting with molecules of a nature similar to hers, develop a growth proportional to that of the organs. In this case, the molecules that will come to add themselves to the soul will be either animate or inanimate; if they are animate, how could they have become such, and from whom will they have received that characteristic? If they are not animate, how will they become such, and how will agreement between them and the first soul arise? How will they form but a single unity with her, and how will they agree with her? Will they not constitute a soul that will remain foreign to the former, who will not possess her requirements of knowledge? This aggregation of molecules that would thus be called soul will resemble the aggregation of molecules that form our body. She would lose parts, she would acquire new ones; she will not be identical. But if we had a soul that was not identical, memory and self-consciousness of our own faculties would be impossible.
  THE SOUL IS EVERYWHERE ENTIRE; THAT IS NOT THE CASE WITH THE BODY.

ENNEAD 05.03 - The Self-Consciousnesses, and What is Above Them., #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04, #Plotinus, #Christianity
  object:ENNEAD 05.03 - The self-consciousnesses, and What is Above Them.
  author class:Plotinus
  --
  1. Must thought, and self-consciousness imply being composed of different parts, and on their mutual contemplation? Must that which is absolutely simple be unable to turn towards itself, to know itself? ls it, on the contrary, possible that for that which is not composite to know itself? self-consciousness, indeed, does not necessarily result from a thing's knowing itself because it is composite, and that one of its parts grasps the other; as, for instance, by sensation we perceive the form and nature of our body. In this case the whole will not be known, unless the part that knows the others to which it is united also knows itself; otherwise, we would find the knowledge of one entity, through another, instead of one entity through itself.
  A SIMPLE PRINCIPLE CAN HAVE self-consciousness.
  While, therefore, asserting that a simple principle does know itself, we must examine into the possibility of this.98 Otherwise, we would have to give up hope of real self-knowledge. But to resign this would imply many absurdities; for if it be absurd to deny that the soul possesses self-knowledge, it would be still more absurd to deny it of intelligence. How could intelligence1091 have knowledge of other beings, if it did not possess the knowledge and science of itself? Indeed, exterior things are perceived by sensation, and even, if you insist, by discursive reason and opinion; but not by intelligence. It is indeed worth examining whether intelligence does, or does not have knowledge of such external things. Evidently, intelligible entities are known by intelligence. Does intelligence limit itself to knowledge of these entities, or does it, while knowing intelligible entities, also know itself? In this case, does it know that it knows only intelligible entities, without being able to know what itself is? While knowing that it knows what belongs to it, is it unable to know what itself, the knower, is? Or can it at the same time know what belongs to it, and also know itself? Then how does this knowledge operate, and how far does it go? This is what we must examine.
  --
  2. Let us begin by a consideration of the soul. Does she possess self-consciousness? By what faculty? And how does she acquire it? It is natural for the sense-power to deal only with exterior objects; for even in the case in which it feels occurrences in the body, it is still perceiving things that are external to it, since it perceives passions experienced by the body over which it presides.99
  FUNCTIONS OF THE DISCURSIVE REASON OF THE SOUL.
  --
  That is the limit of the intellectual power of the soul. Is it, besides, capable of turning upon itself, and cognizing itself, or must this knowledge be sought for only within intelligence? If we assign this knowledge to the intellectual part of the soul; we will be making an intelligence out of it; and we will then have to study in what it differs from the superior Intelligence. If again, we refuse this knowledge to this part of the soul, we will, by reason, rise to Intelligence, and we will have to examine the nature of self-consciousness. Further, if we attribute this knowledge both to the inferior and to the superior intelligences, we shall have to distinguish self-consciousness according as it belongs to the one or to the other; for if there were no difference between these two kinds of intelligence, discursive reason would be identical with pure Intelligence. Does discursive reason, therefore, turn upon itself? Or does it limit itself to the comprehension of the types received from both (sense and intelligence); and, in the latter case, how does it achieve such comprehension? This latter question is the one to be examined here.
  THE HIGHEST PART OF DISCURSIVE REASON RECEIVES IMPRESSIONS FROM INTELLIGENCE.
  --
  But why should this whole (soul-) part that is superior to sensation be assigned to the soul rather than to intelligence? Because the power of the soul consists in reasoning, and because all these operations belong to the discursive reason. But why can we not simply assign to it, in addition, self-consciousness, which would immediately clear up this inquiry? Because the nature of discursive reason consists in considering exterior things, and in scrutinizing their diversity, while to intelligence we attri bute the privilege of contemplating itself, and of contemplating its own contents. But what hinders discursive reason, by some other faculty of the soul, from considering what belongs to it? Because, in this case, instead of discursive reason and reasoning, we would have pure Intelligence. But what then hinders the presence of pure Intelligence within the soul? Nothing, indeed. Shall we then have a right to say that pure Intelligence is a part of the soul? No indeed; but still we would have the right to call it "ours." It is different from, and higher1094 than discursive reason; and still it is "ours," although we cannot count it among the parts of the soul. In one respect it is "ours," and in another, is not "ours;" for at times we make use of it, and at other times we make use of discursive reason; consequently, intelligence is "ours" when we make use of it; and it is not "ours" when we do not make use of it. But what is the meaning of "making use of intelligence"? Does it mean becoming intelligence, and speaking in that character, or does it mean speaking in conformity with intelligence? For we are not intelligence; we speak in conformity with intelligence by the first part of discursive reason, the part that receives impressions from Intelligence. We feel through sensation, and it is we who feel. Is it also we who conceive and who simultaneously are conceived? Or is it we who reason, and who conceive the intellectual notions which enlighten discursive reason? We are indeed essentially constituted by discursive reason. The actualizations of Intelligence are superior to us, while those of sensation are inferior; as to us, "we" are the principal part of the soul, the part that forms a middle power between these two extremes, now lowering ourselves towards sensation, now rising towards Intelligence.102 We acknowledge sensibility to be ours because we are continually feeling. It is not as evident that intelligence is ours, because we do not make use of it continuously, and because it is separated, in this sense, that it is not intelligence that inclines towards us, but rather we who raise our glances towards intelligence. Sensation is our messenger, Intelligence is our king.99
  WE CAN THINK IN CONFORMITY WITH INTELLIGENCE IN TWO WAYS.
  --
  Will he who thus knows himself content himself therewith? Surely not. Exercising a further faculty, we will have the intuition of the intelligence that knows itself; or, seizing it, inasmuch as it is "ours" and we are "its," we will thus cognize intelligence, and know ourselves. This is necessary for our knowledge of what, within intelligence, self-consciousness is. The man becomes intelligence when, abandoning his other faculties, he by intelligence sees Intelligence, and he sees himself in the same manner that Intelligence sees itself.
  INTELLIGENCE IS NOT DIVISIBLE; AND, IN ITS EXISTENCE, IS IDENTICAL WITH THOUGHT.
  --
  6. Reason, therefore, demonstrates that there is a principle which must essentially know itself. But this self-consciousness is more perfect in intelligence than in the soul. The soul knows herself in so far as she knows that she depends on another power; while intelligence, by merely turning towards itself, naturally cognizes its existence and "being." By contemplating1099 realities, it contemplates itself; this contemplation is an actualization, and this actualization is intelligence; for intelligence and thought107 form but a single entity. The entire intelligence sees itself entire, instead of seeing one of its parts by another of its parts. Is it in the nature of intelligence, such as reason conceives of it, to produce within us a simple conviction? No. Intelligence necessarily implies (certitude), and not mere persuasion; for necessity is characteristic of intelligence, while persuasion is characteristic of the soul. Here below, it is true, we rather seek to be persuaded, than to see truth by pure Intelligence. When we were in the superior region, satisfied with intelligence, we used to think, and to contemplate the intelligible, reducing everything to unity. It was Intelligence which thought and spoke about itself; the soul rested, and allowed Intelligence free scope to act. But since we have descended here below, we seek to produce persuasion in the soul, because we wish to contemplate the model in its image.
  THE SOUL MUST BE TAUGHT self-consciousness BY CONVERSION.
  We must, therefore, teach our soul how Intelligence contemplates itself. This has to be taught to that part of our soul which, because of its intellectual character, we call reason, or discursive intelligence, to indicate that it is a kind of intelligence, that it possesses its power by intelligence, and that it derives it from intelligence. This part of the soul must, therefore, know that it knows what it sees, that it knows what it expresses, and that, if it were identical with what it describes, it would thereby know itself. But since intelligible entities come to it from the same principle from which it itself comes, since it is a reason, and as it receives from intelligence entities that are kindred, by comparing them with the traces of intelligence it contains,1100 it must know itself. This image it contains must, therefore, be raised to true Intelligence, which is identical with the true intelligible entities, that is, to the primary and really true Beings; for it is impossible that this intelligence should originate from itself. If then intelligence remain in itself and with itself, if it be what it is (in its nature) to be, that is, intelligence for intelligence can never be unintelligentit must contain within it the knowledge of itself, since it does not issue from itself, and since its function and its "being" (or, true nature) consist in being no more than intelligence.106 It is not an intelligence that devotes itself to practical action, obliged to consider what is external to it, and to issue from itself to become cognizant of exterior things; for it is not necessary that an intelligence which devotes itself to action should know itself. As it does not give itself to actionfor, being pure, it has nothing to desireit operates a conversion towards itself, by virtue of which it is not only probable, but even necessary for it to know itself. Otherwise, what would its life consist of, inasmuch as it does not devote itself to action, and as it remains within itself?
  --
  13. This Principle, therefore, is really indescribable. We are individualizing it in any statement about it. That which is above everything, even above the venerable Intelligence, really has no name, and all1113 that we can state about Him is, that He is not anything. Nor can He be given any name, since we cannot assert anything about Him. We refer to Him only as best we can. In our uncertainty we say, "What does He not feel? is He not self-conscious? does He not know Himself?" Then we must reflect that by speaking thus we are thinking of things, that are opposed to Him of whom we are now thinking. When we suppose that He can be known, or that He possesses self-consciousness, we are already making Him manifold. Were we to attri bute to Him thought, it would appear that He needed this thought. If we imagine thought as being within Him, thought seems to be superfluous. For of what does thought consist? Of the consciousness of the totality formed by the two terms that contri bute to the act of thought, and which fuse therein. That is thinking oneself, and thinking oneself is real thinking; for each of the two elements of thought is itself an unity to which nothing is lacking. On the contrary, the thought of objects exterior (to Intelligence) is not perfect, and is not true thought. That which is supremely simple and supremely absolute stands in need of nothing. The absolute that occupies the second rank needs itself, and, consequently, needs to think itself. Indeed, since Intelligence needs something relatively to itself, it succeeds in satisfying this need, and consequently, in being absolute, only by possessing itself entirely. It suffices itself only by uniting all the elements constituting its nature ("being"), only by dwelling within itself, only by remaining turned towards itself while thinking; for consciousness is the sensation of manifoldness, as is indicated by the etymology of the word "con-scious-ness," or, "conscience." If supreme Thought occur by the conversion of Intelligence towards itself, it evidently is manifold. Even if it said no more than "I am existence," Intelligence would say it as if1114 making a discovery, and Intelligence would be right, because existence is manifold. Even though it should apply itself to something simple, and should say, "I am existence," this would not imply successful grasp of itself or existence. Indeed, when Intelligence speaks of existence in conformity with reality, intelligence does not speak of it as of a stone, but, merely, in a single word expresses something manifold. The existence that really and essentially deserves the name of existence, instead of having of it only a trace which would not be existence, and which would be only an image of it, such existence is a multiple entity. Will not each one of the elements of this multiple entity be thought? No doubt you will not be able to think it if you take it alone and separated from the others; but existence itself is in itself something manifold. Whatever object you name, it possesses existence. Consequently, He who is supremely simple cannot think Himself; if He did, He would be somewhere, (which is not the case). Therefore He does not think, and He cannot be grasped by thought.
  WE COME SUFFICIENTLY NEAR TO HIM TO TALK ABOUT HIM.

ENNEAD 05.05 - That Intelligible Entities Are Not External to the Intelligence of the Good., #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02, #Plotinus, #Christianity
  2. Therefore intelligible entities must not be regarded as exterior to Intelligence, nor as impressions formed in it. Nor must we deny it the intimate possession of truth. Otherwise, any cognition of intelligibles is made impossible, and the reality of both them and Intelligence itself is destroyed. Intimate possession of all its essences is the only possible condition that will allow knowledge and truth to remain within Intelligence, that will save the reality of the intelligibles, that will make possible the knowledge of the essence of every thing, instead of limiting us to the579 mere notion of its qualities, a notion which gives us only the image and vestige of the object, which does not permit us to possess it, to unite ourselves with it, to become one with it. On this condition only, can Intelligence know, and know truly without being exposed to forgetfulness or groping uncertainty; can it be the location where truth will abide and essences will subsist; can it live and thinkall of which should belong to this blessed nature, and without which nowhere could be found anything that deserved our esteem and respect. On this condition only will Intelligence be able to dispense with credulity or demonstration in believing realities; for Intelligence itself consists in these very realities, and possesses a clear self-consciousness. Intelligence sees that which is its own principle, sees what is below it, and to what it gives birth. Intelligence knows that in order to know its own nature, it must not place credence in any testimony except its own; that it essentially is intelligible reality. It therefore is truth itself, whose very being it is to conform to no foreign form, but to itself exclusively. Within Intelligence fuses both being, and that which affirms its existence; thus reality justifies itself. By whom could Intelligence be convinced of error? What demonstration thereof would be of any value? Since there is nothing truer than truth, any proof to the contrary would depend on some preceding proof, and while seeming to declare something different, would in reality be begging the question.
  SUPREME INTELLIGENCE IS DIVINITY AND SUPREME ROYALTY.

ENNEAD 05.06 - The Superessential Principle Does Not Think - Which is the First Thinking Principle, and Which is the Second?, #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02, #Plotinus, #Christianity
  5. What is manifold needs to seek itself, and naturally desires to embrace itself, and to grasp itself by self-consciousness. But that which is absolutely One could not reflect on itself, and need self-consciousness. The absolutely identical principle is superior to consciousness and thought. Intelligence is not the first; it is not the first either by its essence, nor by the majestic value of its existence. It occupies only the second rank. It existed only when the Good already existed; and as soon as it existed, it turned towards the Good. In turning towards the Good, Intelligence cognized the latter; for thought consists of conversion towards the Good, and aspiration thereto. Aspiration towards the Good, therefore, produced thought, which identifies itself with the Good; for vision presupposes the desire to see. The Good, therefore, cannot think; for it has no good other than itself. Besides, when something other than the Good thinks the Good, it thinks the Good because it takes the form of the Good, and resembles the Good. It thinks, because itself becomes for itself a good and desirable object, and because it possesses an image of the Good. If this thing always remain in the same disposition, it will always retain this image of the Good. By thinking itself, Intelligence simultaneously thinks the Good; for it does not think itself as being actualized; yet every actualization has the Good as its goal.
  THE GOOD AS SUPRA-COGITATIVE IS ALSO SUPRA-ACTIVE.

ENNEAD 05.08 - Concerning Intelligible Beauty., #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02, #Plotinus, #Christianity
  The advantages derived from this conversion towards the divinity are first self-consciousness, so long as he remains distinct from the divinity. If he penetrate into his interior sanctuary, he possesses all things, and renouncing self-consciousness in favor of indistinction from the divinity, he fuses with it. As soon as he desires to see something, so to speak, outside of himself, it is he himself that he considers, even exteriorly. The soul that studies the divinity must form an idea of him while seeking to know him. Later, knowing how great is that divinity to which she desires to unite herself, and being persuaded that she will find beatitude in this union, she plunges herself into the depths of the divinity until, instead of contenting herself with contemplating the intelligible world, she herself becomes an object of contemplation, and shines with the clearness of the conceptions whose source is on high.
  HOW THE SOUL MAY BE UNITED TO THE DIVINITY WITHOUT SEEING HIM.
  But how can one be united to beauty, without seeing it? If it be seen as some thing distinct from oneself, he is not yet fused with it. If the act of vision imply a relation with an exterior object, we have no vision; or, at least, this vision consists in the identity of seer and seen. This vision is a kind of conscience, of self-consciousness; and if this feeling be too acute, there is even danger of breaking up this unity. Besides, one must not forget that the sensations of evils make stronger impressions, and yield feebler knowledge, because the latter are frittered away by the force of impressions. Thus sickness strikes sharply (but arouses571 only an obscure notion); health, on the contrary, thanks to the calm that characterizes it, yields us a clearer notion of itself, for it remains quietly within us, because it is proper to us, and fuses with us. On the contrary, sickness is not proper to us, but foreign. Consequently it manifests itself vividly, because it is opposed to our nature; while we, on the contrary, enjoy but a feeble feeling of ourselves and of what belongs to us. The state in which we grasp ourselves best is the one in which our consciousness of ourselves fuses with us. Consequently on high, at the very moment when our knowledge by intelligence is at its best, we believe that we are ignorant of it, because we consult sensation, which assures us that it has seen nothing. Indeed it has not seen anything, and it never could see anything such (as the intelligible beings). It is therefore the sensation that doubts; but he who has the ability to see differs therefrom. Before the seer could doubt, he would have to cease believing in his very existence; for he could not, so to speak, externalize himself to consider himself with the eyes of the body.
  NATURE OF THE OBJECT OF SPIRITUAL VISION.

ENNEAD 06.05 - The One and Identical Being is Everywhere Present In Its Entirety.345, #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04, #Plotinus, #Christianity
  Ecstasy has two advantages following, self-consciousness and possession of all things, v. 8.11 (31-570).
  Ecstasy illustrated by secrecy of mystery-rites, vi. 9.11 (9-169).
  --
  Memory, timeless, constitutes self-consciousness, iv. 3.25 (27-429).
  Memory when beyond, helped by training here below, iv. 4.5 (28-447).

ENNEAD 06.07 - How Ideas Multiplied, and the Good., #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 03, #Plotinus, #Christianity
  Why must these things be considered as goods, when considered from this point of view? The solution of this problem may be arrived at from the following consideration. When for the first time Intelligence contemplated the Good, this its contemplation split the Good's unity into multiplicity. Though itself were a single being, this its thought divided the unity because of its inability to grasp it in its entirety. To this it may be answered that Intelligence was not yet such the first time it contemplated the Good. Did it then contemplate the Good without intelligence? Intelligence did not yet see the Good; but Intelligence dwelt near it, was dependent on it, and was turned towards it.104 Having arrived at its fulness, because it was operating on high, and was trending towards the Good, the movement of Intelligence itself led it to its fulness; since then it was, no longer a single movement, but a movement perfect and complete. It became all things, and possessing self-consciousness, it recognized that itself was all things. It thus became intelligence, which possesses its fulness so as to contain what it should see, and which sees by the light that it receives from Him from whom it derives what it sees. That is why the Good is said to be not only the cause of729 "being," but rather the cause of the vision of "being." As for sense-objects, the sun is the cause that makes them exist, and renders them visible, as it is also the cause of vision, and as however the sun is neither the vision nor the visible objects, likewise the Good is the cause of being and of intelligence,105 it is a light in respect of the beings that are seen and the Intelligence that sees them; but it is neither the beings nor the Intelligence; it is only their cause; it produces thought by shedding its light on the beings and on Intelligence. It is thus that Intelligence has arrived to fulness, and that on arriving at fulness it has become perfect and has seen. That which preceded its fulness is its principle. But it has another principle (which is the Good), which is somewhat exterior to it, and which gave it its fulness, and while giving it this fulness impressed on it the form (of itself, the Good).
  ALL IS INTELLIGENCE; BUT THIS IS DIFFERENTIATED INTO UNIVERSAL AND INDIVIDUAL.
  --
  All we have said above goes on the assumption that matter is the evil. But if it were something else, as, for instance, malice, and if the essence of matter were to receive sensation, would intimacy with what is better still be the good of matter? But if it were not the malice itself of matter which choose the good, it was what had become evil in matter. If the essence (of matter) were identical with evil, how could matter wish to possess this good? Would evil love itself, if it had self-consciousness? But how could that which is not lovable be loved? For we have demonstrated that a being's good does not consist in that which is suitable to it. Enough about this, however.
  THE GOOD IS A NATURE WHICH POSSESSES NO KIND OF FORM ITSELF.
  --
  THE SELF-SUFFICIENT GOOD DOES NOT NEED self-consciousness THEREOF.
  But how could we admit (the existence of) a nature without feeling or consciousness of itself? We might answer this, What consciousness of self can (the divinity) have? Can He say, "I am?" But (in the above-mentioned sense), He is not. Can He say, "I am the Good"? Then He would still be saying of Himself "I am" (whereas we have just explained that this He cannot do150). What then will He add (to his simplicity) by limiting Himself to saying, "The Good"? For it is possible to think "the Good" apart from "He is" so long as the Good is not, as an attri bute, applied to some other being. But whoever thinks himself764 good will surely say "I am the good"; if not, he will think the predicate "good," but he will not be enabled to think that he is so himself. Thus, the thought of good will imply this thought, "I am the good." If this thought itself be the Good, it will not be the thought of Him, but of the good, and he will not be the Good, but the thought.151 If the thought of good is different from the Good itself, the Good will be prior to the thought of the good. If the Good be self-sufficient before the thought, it suffices to itself to be the Good; and in this respect has no need of the thought that it is the Good.
  --
  41. It would seem that thought was only a help granted to natures which, though divine, nevertheless do not occupy the first rank; it is like an eye given to the blind.159 But what need would the eye have to see essence, if itself were light? To seek light is the characteristic of him who needs it, because he finds in himself nothing but darkness.159 Since thought seeks light, while the light does not seek the light, the primary Nature, not seeking the light (since it is light itself), could not any more seek thought (since it is thought that seeks light); thinking could not suit it, therefore. What utility or advantage would thought bring him, inasmuch as thought itself needs aid to think? The Good therefore has not self-consciousness, not having need thereof; it is not doubleness; or rather, it is not double as is thought which implies (besides769 intelligence) a third term, namely, the intelligible (world). If thought, the thinking subject (the thinker) and the thought object (the thought) be absolutely identical, they form but one, and are absolutely indistinguishable; if they be distinct, they differ, and can no more be the Good. Thus we must put everything aside when we think of this "best Nature," which stands in need of no assistance. Whatever you may attri bute to this Nature, you diminish it by that amount, since it stands in need of nothing. For us, on the contrary, thought is a beautiful thing, because our soul has need of intelligence. It is similarly a beautiful thing for intelligence, because thought is identical with essence, and it is thought that gave existence to intelligence.
  THE GOOD IS NOT GOOD FOR ITSELF, BUT ONLY FOR THE NATURES BELOW IT.

Theaetetus, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  (1) We do not claim for the popular Psychology the position of a science at all; it cannot, like the Physical Sciences, proceed by the Inductive Method: it has not the necessity of Mathematics: it does not, like Metaphysic, argue from abstract notions or from internal coherence. It is made up of scattered observations. A few of these, though they may sometimes appear to be truisms, are of the greatest value, and free from all doubt. We are conscious of them in ourselves; we observe them working in others; we are assured of them at all times. For example, we are absolutely certain, (a) of the influence exerted by the mind over the body or by the body over the mind: (b) of the power of association, by which the appearance of some person or the occurrence of some event recalls to mind, not always but often, other persons and events: (c) of the effect of habit, which is strongest when least disturbed by reflection, and is to the mind what the bones are to the body: (d) of the real, though not unlimited, freedom of the human will: (e) of the reference, more or less distinct, of our sensations, feelings, thoughts, actions, to ourselves, which is called consciousness, or, when in excess, self-consciousness: (f) of the distinction of the 'I' and 'Not I,' of ourselves and outward objects. But when we attempt to gather up these elements in a single system, we discover that the links by which we combine them are apt to be mere words. We are in a country which has never been cleared or surveyed; here and there only does a gleam of light come through the darkness of the forest.
  (2) These fragments, although they can never become science in the ordinary sense of the word, are a real part of knowledge and may be of great value in education. We may be able to add a good deal to them from our own experience, and we may verify them by it. Self-examination is one of those studies which a man can pursue alone, by attention to himself and the processes of his individual mind. He may learn much about his own character and about the character of others, if he will 'make his mind sit down' and look at itself in the glass. The great, if not the only use of such a study is a practical one,to know, first, human nature, and, secondly, our own nature, as it truly is.
  --
  c. When in imagination we enter into the closet of the mind and withdraw ourselves from the external world, we seem to find there more or less distinct processes which may be described by the words, 'I perceive,' 'I feel,' 'I think,' 'I want,' 'I wish,' 'I like,' 'I dislike,' 'I fear,' 'I know,' 'I remember,' 'I imagine,' 'I dream,' 'I act,' 'I endeavour,' 'I hope.' These processes would seem to have the same notions attached to them in the minds of all educated persons. They are distinguished from one another in thought, but they intermingle. It is possible to reflect upon them or to become conscious of them in a greater or less degree, or with a greater or less continuity or attention, and thus arise the intermittent phenomena of consciousness or self-consciousness. The use of all of them is possible to us at all times; and therefore in any operation of the mind the whole are latent. But we are able to characterise them sufficiently by that part of the complex action which is the most prominent. We have no difficulty in distinguishing an act of sight or an act of will from an act of thought, although thought is present in both of them. Hence the conception of different faculties or different virtues is precarious, because each of them is passing into the other, and they are all one in the mind itself; they appear and reappear, and may all be regarded as the ever-varying phases or aspects or differences of the same mind or person.
  d. Nearest the sense in the scale of the intellectual faculties is memory, which is a mode rather than a faculty of the mind, and accompanies all mental operations. There are two principal kinds of it, recollection and recognition,recollection in which forgotten things are recalled or return to the mind, recognition in which the mind finds itself again among things once familiar. The simplest way in which we can represent the former to ourselves is by shutting our eyes and trying to recall in what we term the mind's eye the picture of the surrounding scene, or by laying down the book which we are reading and recapitulating what we can remember of it. But many times more powerful than recollection is recognition, perhaps because it is more assisted by association. We have known and forgotten, and after a long interval the thing which we have seen once is seen again by us, but with a different feeling, and comes back to us, not as new knowledge, but as a thing to which we ourselves impart a notion already present to us; in Plato's words, we set the stamp upon the wax. Every one is aware of the difference between the first and second sight of a place, between a scene clothed with associations or bare and divested of them. We say to ourselves on revisiting a spot after a long interval: How many things have happened since I last saw this! There is probably no impression ever received by us of which we can venture to say that the vestiges are altogether lost, or that we might not, under some circumstances, recover it. A long-forgotten knowledge may be easily renewed and therefore is very different from ignorance. Of the language learnt in childhood not a word may be remembered, and yet, when a new beginning is made, the old habit soon returns, the neglected organs come back into use, and the river of speech finds out the dried-up channel.

The Coming Race Contents, #The Coming Race, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
  sciousness to self-consciousness through a
  .series of continuous marches. Nature should
  --
  characteristic of self-consciousness.
  So, in man also, especially of that order
  --
  again from self-consciousness to super-con
  sciousness will mean the difference of a whole
  --
  signifies the growth of self-consciousness in
  the units out of a mass unconsciousness or

Thus Spoke Zarathustra text, #Thus Spoke Zarathustra, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
  the impression of diffident self-consciousness and a
  morbid fear of self-betrayal, but rather of that Dionysian exuberance which Zarathustra celebrates.

Timaeus, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  More light is thrown upon the Timaeus by a comparison of the previous philosophies. For the physical science of the ancients was traditional, descending through many generations of Ionian and Pythagorean philosophers. Plato does not look out upon the heavens and describe what he sees in them, but he builds upon the foundations of others, adding something out of the 'depths of his own self-consciousness.' Socrates had already spoken of God the creator, who made all things for the best. While he ridiculed the superficial explanations of phenomena which were current in his age, he recognised the marks both of benevolence and of design in the frame of man and in the world. The apparatus of winds and waters is contemptuously rejected by him in the Phaedo, but he thinks that there is a power greater than that of any Atlas in the 'Best' (Phaedo; Arist. Met.). Plato, following his master, affirms this principle of the best, but he acknowledges that the best is limited by the conditions of matter. In the generation before Socrates, Anaxagoras had brought together 'Chaos' and 'Mind'; and these are connected by Plato in the Timaeus, but in accordance with his own mode of thinking he has interposed between them the idea or pattern according to which mind worked. The circular impulse (Greek) of the one philosopher answers to the circular movement (Greek) of the other. But unlike Anaxagoras, Plato made the sun and stars living beings and not masses of earth or metal. The Pythagoreans again had framed a world out of numbers, which they constructed into figures. Plato adopted their speculations and improved upon them by a more exact knowledge of geometry. The Atomists too made the world, if not out of geometrical figures, at least out of different forms of atoms, and these atoms resembled the triangles of Plato in being too small to be visible. But though the physiology of the Timaeus is partly borrowed from them, they are either ignored by Plato or referred to with a secret contempt and dislike. He looks with more favour on the Pythagoreans, whose intervals of number applied to the distances of the planets reappear in the Timaeus. It is probable that among the Pythagoreans living in the fourth century B.C., there were already some who, like Plato, made the earth their centre. Whether he obtained his circles of the Same and Other from any previous thinker is uncertain. The four elements are taken from Empedocles; the interstices of the Timaeus may also be compared with his (Greek). The passage of one element into another is common to Heracleitus and several of the Ionian philosophers. So much of a syncretist is Plato, though not after the manner of the Neoplatonists. For the elements which he borrows from others are fused and transformed by his own genius. On the other hand we find fewer traces in Plato of early Ionic or Eleatic speculation. He does not imagine the world of sense to be made up of opposites or to be in a perpetual flux, but to vary within certain limits which are controlled by what he calls the principle of the same. Unlike the Eleatics, who relegated the world to the sphere of not-being, he admits creation to have an existence which is real and even eternal, although dependent on the will of the creator. Instead of maintaining the doctrine that the void has a necessary place in the existence of the world, he rather affirms the modern thesis that nature abhors a vacuum, as in the Sophist he also denies the reality of not-being (Aristot. Metaph.). But though in these respects he differs from them, he is deeply penetrated by the spirit of their philosophy; he differs from them with reluctance, and gladly recognizes the 'generous depth' of Parmenides (Theaet.).
  There is a similarity between the Timaeus and the fragments of Philolaus, which by some has been thought to be so great as to create a suspicion that they are derived from it. Philolaus is known to us from the Phaedo of Plato as a Pythagorean philosopher residing at Thebes in the latter half of the fifth century B.C., after the dispersion of the original Pythagorean society. He was the teacher of Simmias and Cebes, who became disciples of Socrates. We have hardly any other information about him. The story that Plato had purchased three books of his writings from a relation is not worth repeating; it is only a fanciful way in which an ancient biographer dresses up the fact that there was supposed to be a resemblance between the two writers. Similar gossiping stories are told about the sources of the Republic and the Phaedo. That there really existed in antiquity a work passing under the name of Philolaus there can be no doubt. Fragments of this work are preserved to us, chiefly in Stobaeus, a few in Boethius and other writers. They remind us of the Timaeus, as well as of the Phaedrus and Philebus. When the writer says (Stob. Eclog.) that all things are either finite (definite) or infinite (indefinite), or a union of the two, and that this antithesis and synthesis pervades all art and nature, we are reminded of the Philebus. When he calls the centre of the world (Greek), we have a parallel to the Phaedrus. His distinction between the world of order, to which the sun and moon and the stars belong, and the world of disorder, which lies in the region between the moon and the earth, approximates to Plato's sphere of the Same and of the Other. Like Plato (Tim.), he denied the above and below in space, and said that all things were the same in relation to a centre. He speaks also of the world as one and indestructible: 'for neither from within nor from without does it admit of destruction' (Tim). He mentions ten heavenly bodies, including the sun and moon, the earth and the counter-earth (Greek), and in the midst of them all he places the central fire, around which they are movingthis is hidden from the earth by the counter-earth. Of neither is there any trace in Plato, who makes the earth the centre of his system. Philolaus magnifies the virtues of particular numbers, especially of the number 10 (Stob. Eclog.), and descants upon odd and even numbers, after the manner of the later Pythagoreans. It is worthy of remark that these mystical fancies are nowhere to be found in the writings of Plato, although the importance of number as a form and also an instrument of thought is ever present to his mind. Both Philolaus and Plato agree in making the world move in certain numerical ratios according to a musical scale: though Bockh is of opinion that the two scales, of Philolaus and of the Timaeus, do not correspond...We appear not to be sufficiently acquainted with the early Pythagoreans to know how far the statements contained in these fragments corresponded with their doctrines; and we therefore cannot pronounce, either in favour of the genuineness of the fragments, with Bockh and Zeller, or, with Valentine Rose and Schaarschmidt, against them. But it is clear that they throw but little light upon the Timaeus, and that their resemblance to it has been exaggerated.

WORDNET



--- Overview of noun self-consciousness

The noun self-consciousness has 2 senses (first 1 from tagged texts)
              
1. (2) self-consciousness, uneasiness, uncomfortableness ::: (embarrassment deriving from the feeling that others are critically aware of you)
2. self-consciousness ::: (self-awareness plus the additional realization that others are similarly aware of you)


--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun self-consciousness

2 senses of self-consciousness                    

Sense 1
self-consciousness, uneasiness, uncomfortableness
   => embarrassment
     => shame
       => feeling
         => state
           => attribute
             => abstraction, abstract entity
               => entity

Sense 2
self-consciousness
   => self-awareness
     => awareness, consciousness, cognizance, cognisance, knowingness
       => knowing
         => higher cognitive process
           => process, cognitive process, mental process, operation, cognitive operation
             => cognition, knowledge, noesis
               => psychological feature
                 => abstraction, abstract entity
                   => entity


--- Hyponyms of noun self-consciousness
                                    


--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun self-consciousness

2 senses of self-consciousness                    

Sense 1
self-consciousness, uneasiness, uncomfortableness
   => embarrassment

Sense 2
self-consciousness
   => self-awareness




--- Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun self-consciousness

2 senses of self-consciousness                    

Sense 1
self-consciousness, uneasiness, uncomfortableness
  -> embarrassment
   => self-consciousness, uneasiness, uncomfortableness
   => shamefacedness, sheepishness
   => chagrin, humiliation, mortification
   => confusion, discombobulation
   => abashment, bashfulness
   => discomfiture, discomposure, disconcertion, disconcertment

Sense 2
self-consciousness
  -> self-awareness
   => orientation
   => self-consciousness




--- Grep of noun self-consciousness
self-consciousness



IN WEBGEN [10000/12]

Wikipedia - Hegel's Idealism: The Satisfactions of Self-Consciousness -- 1989 book by Robert B. Pippin
Wikipedia - Person -- Being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness
Wikipedia - Self-consciousness (Vedanta)
Wikipedia - Self-consciousness -- An acute sense of self-awareness, a preoccupation with oneself
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34788022-self-consciousness-and-objectivity
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8368122-hegel-on-self-consciousness
Psychology Wiki - Self-consciousness
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - self-consciousness-phenomenological
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - self-consciousness
Junjou Romantica 3 -- -- Studio Deen -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Comedy Drama Romance Shounen Ai -- Junjou Romantica 3 Junjou Romantica 3 -- After living together for three years, Misaki Takahashi and Akihiko "Usagi" Usami's relationship has been progressing smoothly. However, all great relationships have problems, and theirs is just beginning. With a new rival on the horizon, Usagi worries about Misaki's feelings towards him. -- -- Meanwhile, Ryuuichirou Isaka has always loved to intrude on Misaki and Usagi's love life, but his own love life hasn't been all smooth sailing—Isaka and his secretary Kaoru Asahina have been dating for a few years; however, Asahina prefers to keep their professional and private lives separate, often leading to troubled waters between them. -- -- As for Nowaki Kusama and Hiroki Kamijou, now that their careers are finally taking off, they hardly see each other anymore. With the time they spend together lessening, doubts and insecurities threaten to creep in between them. On the other hand, the 17-year age gap between Shinobu Takatsuki and You Miyagi has been a constant barrier in their relationship, but as they learn more about each other, their self-consciousness continues to fade. -- -- The beloved couples of Junjou Romantica, Junjou Egoist, and Junjou Terrorist are back again, this time with a new addition: Junjou Mistake! -- -- 96,777 7.73
Reflexive self-consciousness
Self-consciousness



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